Written by Melissa Karen Sances
Photos by Alex Cook

Sponsored by Valley Home Improvement

Published in Northampton Living (July 2023)

Paintbrush in hand, Alex Cook surveyed the brick wall on Bridge Street. He’d never painted publicly before. For years he’d swapped sketchbooks with his two best friends in Wellesley. Sometimes they rode bikes to Bertucci’s just after the dinner rush, because in the restaurant was a giant chalkboard known to moonlight as a canvas. The manager gave them free dinner rolls and all-access to the chalk stash, and though their murals were ephemeral – they would be erased for tomorrow’s specials – they were always meaningful.

The trio ended up at UMass-Amherst together, but there they’d all chosen slightly different paths. Cook’s led him to downtown Northampton where he proposed painting 3 murals as part of his senior thesis.

He wasn’t expecting anyone to notice. It was 1997, and it would be more than a decade before the initial wall belonged to the bustling Roost coffee shop. It was just … bare, and the building owner welcomed some color.

And now? Walk up Bridge toward Market and stop just before Roost’s door. You’ll see a glorious “Tree of Life,” lush green against a brilliant night sky. Cross Bridge and walk to Valley Antiques, and you’ll find an alcove. There, a man rests under a table where a “Meal of Kindness” awaits. Go back to Roost, turn onto Market, and walk to Market Street Laundry. Behold a “Human Crowd,” a tribute to the burden and the beauty of being human. (The guy on the landline-from-the-sky is particularly wonderful.)

What surprised Cook most were the cheers. While he painted, people would drive by and clap and honk their horns and congratulate him on creating. “That was the beginning of my learning process, like if you do something sincere and good in public, people notice,” says the artist. “It broadened my eyes and I started to feel hungry to make people feel good and invite people to be part of the process.”

Cook has been painting with love for more than 26 years, but he only made it official a decade ago. While on a music tour in New Orleans, the local principal asked if he could paint something that might help the students feel safe. You are loved, he thought. The message was only 6 inches high, but the first 2 full-sized murals would be rendered the following year in Socorro, New Mexico, where his niece and nephew went to school. In the past 10 years he has been commissioned to paint those 3 words in schools, prisons, shelters and religious organizations all over the country. Last December he painted his 100th “You Are Loved” mural in Concord, Massachusetts with the help of students at the Middlesex School. “In a way I feel like my murals have always been about that,” he admits, “but it was like, say the word.”

Love is something Cook has always been blessed with. His Bertucci’s buddies, Pasqualina Azzarello and John Bliss, have loved him since the sixth grade. Now the Arts Coordinator for the City of Easthampton, Azzarello remembers being seated behind Cook in September 1985. She had just moved to Massachusetts from California, and it turned out he had, too. The two became fast friends. Bliss, who now owns Broadturn Farm in Scarborough, Maine, recalls that as kids either he or Cook would “score some nice material, paper or pens for some holiday thing,” and then they would have their very own Christmas, drawing blissfully for hours.

In their sophomore year at Wellesley High School, the trio met their guardian art-angel, Bob Callahan. “We all learned to be artists together,” says Azzarello. “It was already in us but his whole approach was to teach us to trust our most authentic selves.”

For Cook, that meant trusting what he already knew: that art wasn’t something he might do, it was what he did. But how would that work outside of school? “I knew that I had this gift, but I had no idea how to make it useful in the world,” he says. “So making those first few murals [in Northampton] really felt like a godsend that gave me a very specific path to take.”

His lifelong friends are not surprised that Cook’s journey has included 100 “You Are Loved” murals. Azzarello admires that that simple message is accessible to everyone, “from the youngest child to our eldest community member.” Bliss concurs. “It’s just a reminder of a truth, even if it’s like, my mom loves me, my dog loves me. It’s beautiful, and I think he’s really found something in that phrase that combines the simplicity and profundity of that spiritual sentiment.”

Cook likens art to a sort of spiritual treasure hunt, a process of finding rather than creating. “It’s like walking through an orchard and picking fruits that are already there,” he says. “And I just have the fun of exploring that orchard.” It’s how he sows love.