Growing up in Reading, artist Theron Cook didn’t think about the Pagoda much.
“Well, it was being younger and being naive to what it really means,” he said while taking a short break from mixing paints on a paper plate to continue the mural he’s creating in the main lobby of the iconic Reading landmark. “Now that I understand the back story and what landmarks mean to any community, I have more appreciation for it now.”
Back then, it was just a building on the hill, said Cook, 41.
“It was like I had no context of how it got there, and that’s part of the process of learning and understanding how these things appear,” he said.
Reading artist Theron Cook paints a cherry tree trunk on a column in the lobby of the Pagoda. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
He’s making sure that his 10-year-old son, Leo, doesn’t make the same mistake.
Cook has spent the last three weeks painting the columns in the lobby after researching Japanese motifs for several months.
He brought Leo up one day to help out, but his son had a question about Theron’s depiction of a fishing boat that had only a man at the helm.
“He suggested I add a family,” Cook said. “So I added a female figure and a little child figure to represent a family. I thought that was a great idea, and it was a moment where we were painting together. His idea came to life through me, and we had a moment there. We got to share the moment in the process of creating this piece.”
Reading artist Theron Cook worked with his son Leo, 10, to add a family to the Japanese fishing boat in a mural inside the Pagoda lobby. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
That moment reflected a similar experience in Cook’s own youth, when he had to give up his athletic dreams after an injury and took an art class in school.
“My dad saw that I took a liking to art,” he said, smiling at the memory. “He bought me a paint set for Easter, which I thought was odd because usually I get an Easter basket with candy. But once I got that gift, I started painting murals all over my bedroom walls and on the ceiling, and that sparked my identity.”
After earning a degree and working in advertising in New York, Cook returned home and started his own business, Don’t Quit, which focuses on mental health, following his niece’s suicide.
“I found her sketchbook, and she had an article of me that was published in the Reading Eagle, and they kind of highlighted what I was doing in the art field,” he said. “I had no idea she was looking at me from afar and didn’t even know she was into art. So that kind of led me into formulating a foundation and helping creatives and individuals have an outlet for self-expression and also to pursue their creative careers to uplift and inspire the community.”
Cook’s early mural painting foreshadowed his Pagoda work, as his depictions of Japanese culture have spilled above the columns and onto the ceiling, now festooned with cherry blossoms.
“I automatically started researching Japanese imagery, different icons to represent the totality of what says Japanese without writing ‘Japanese,’” Cook said. “So, koi fish, powerful waves, Mount Fuji, the crane, the red sun, and then the cherry blossoms. You know, all together, that kind of says Japanese, and it complements the construction and brings life into the structure.”
Cook also pays homage to the historical nature of the Pagoda site by including boulders at the base of the columns, how it was the location of a quarry owned by the Pagoda builder, William Whitman.
Reading artist Theron Cook painted rocks at the foundation of his murals in the lobby of the Pagoda to honor Mount Penn. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Alexa Freyman, the president of the Foundation for the Reading Pagoda, is excited by how the mural has come together to provide a unifying element to the lobby.
“When we were in the beginning phases, we knew that we wanted to do some sort of mural project in here,” she said. “We didn’t quite know where.”
They looked at the wall spaces, “because when you think of a mural, you think of the wall,” she said.
Then they had an “Aha!” moment, Freyman said.
“It’s the columns,” she exclaimed. “It has to be the columns!”
That worked out perfectly with Cook’s mock-ups and the creation of cherry trees that extend up from the columns and onto the ceiling.
Reading artist Theron Cook paints cherry blossoms on the ceiling of the Pagoda lobby. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
“We were looking at the space, trying to decide where would it be cool to have a mural to kind of bring it into the future, complementing the space, not decorating, but complementing it,” Cook said about painting the murals on the columns. “I was thinking, yeah, that’s out of the box, and I could create imagery that complements the space and also bring it to the next level.”
Cook is putting the final touches on the mural project in time for a projected late-summer reopening of the Pagoda.
“I’m super grateful and honored to be able to be selected and have this opportunity to be a part of the renovation and part of the continuation of this landmark in Reading,” he said. “It is truly an honor, and I don’t take it for granted. I really don’t, and I’m excited for people to come experience the new and improved Pagoda.”
Reading artist Theron Cook has a new-found appreciation of the Pagoda and its meaning to the community. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)