Rutherford County

Murfreesboro

Todd/Merryman Farm

An 80-acre, alumni-owned corn, cotton, wheat and soybean farm in Murfreesboro provides the canvas for the 51st mural in the campaign.

The 60-foot-wide mural in Rutherford County is located near Cedar Crest Golf Course just a few miles south of the Nashville Superspeedway. It is visible to about 2,700 passersby each day.

“My blood runs orange, and for me, there’s no other college to go to,” said Joan Merryman (Knoxville ’93, ’94). “We’re right near a golf course where high school students attend golf tournaments in our county, and I was like ‘Oh, my goodness, what a great opportunity for those kids to see UT in the town that Middle Tennessee State University is in.’ It seems to be blue, and I just thought, no, we need to bring a little orange to this county.”

The property is located in the fast-growing Walter Hill community, and the land has been in the family for two generations. Merryman’s father, the late John Todd (Knoxville, ’52, ’59) farmed this land along with her mother, Sue Todd. In between his degrees, John Todd served in the Army before obtaining his doctorate and returning to UT Knoxville where he served as a professor of agricultural education for 35 years.

During his time at UT Knoxville, Todd received the Distinguished Service Award in Agricultural Education and the Outstanding Teacher Award for the UT College of Agriculture. He also visited a high school in every county in Tennessee to recruit students to attend UT Knoxville.

“I’d say that you can’t separate our family’s history from the University of Tennessee and when my grandfather passed away in October of 2022, we decided that this would be an awesome way to honor him and his memory, because this farm is on the lands that he grew up farming,” said Todd Merryman (Knoxville, ‘21), John Todd’s grandson.

Todd Merryman is a third-generation UT Knoxville graduate. Additional family members are UT Knoxville alumni too, including four grandchildren and two grandchildren-in-law on his side.

Completed in February 2024, the Todd/Merryman Farm mural expands the statewide campaign’s footprint to 47 Tennessee counties.

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SEe it for yourself:

7644 Mona Rd.
Murfreesboro, TN 37129

Meet the Artist

Michael Cooper is well into his third decade of painting large-scale custom wall murals. He also provides decorative finishes, Venetian plasters, Trompe L’oeil and hand-painted large-scale graphics and signage.

Michael started Murals & More LLC in 1990 with his wife and business partner, Mickie, and since then he has designed and painted everything from small interior residential projects to enormous hotel interiors, massive exterior highway painting projects and fabulous Public Art installations.

Also an accomplished decorative painter, he has transformed many surfaces into amazing faux brick, intricate marble and classic Italian Plaster.

He is internationally renowned for his attention to detail and ability to create realistic and whimsical trompe l’oeil murals. People have simply been amazed at discovering what they thought was a series of wrought iron balconies or a clumsily placed ladder was actually a flat painted surface.

Even though his specialty is custom, large-scale wall murals and decorative finishes, Michael also has provided his clients with painted furniture, ceiling murals, floor cloths, backdrops, canvas murals and many other specialty items.

Michael Cooper
Owner and Lead Artist
Murals & More
615-591-2575 michael@muralsandmore.com fmuralsandmore.com