Story By : Faith Callens

On March 2, there was a man who stood on the corner of West Dallas Avenue and Chisholm Drive in Selma.

This man wasn’t just an ordinary bystander but he was a man with an artistic talent and a paintbrush.

His name is Michael Vaughan Sims.

Sims grew up in Selma and lived there until he finished high school but lived in Mobile, Alabama until the age of two years old.

He graduated in 1984 from Selma High School and went off to college at Auburn University to study architecture but graduated in Theatre Design .

He continued his education at Yale University for graduate school and received his master’s from the university’s School of Drama program in theatrical design , lighting design and costume and set design.

After college, Sims moved to New York for work as an independent designer for theatre until he had a circumstance to occur to make him decide to return back to his home in Selma .

“I was designing sets and costumes mainly for non for-profit regional theatres across the country and I did a lot of assisting, drafting , model making for broadway shows for Opera and dance . I taught at Princeton briefly for their program for theatre and dance and I taught at Ohio University for a while teaching drafting and set design. In 2008, my apartment building in Harlem changed hands and the new landlord bought my lease so I had to move, and I decided to come back home in 2008 to start over as an independent fine artist because there’s not that much theatre in Alabama”, said Sims.

Sims worked as a independent fine artist by having gallery shows and entering jury competitions to become known throughout Central Alabama .

In 2020, Sims was contacted by a non- profit organization called Arts Revive located in Selma and was offered a job to paint a mural which lead him to other mural painting opportunities around the city.

“This mural is the fourth mural that we have done with Vaughan. The first mural we did was behind Gallery 905 which consisted of the butterflies and that represented Selma as the Butterfly Capitol of Alabama, and we did another mural in Camden and we did Camellia, the state flower and on point out next to Sonic, which is the bird dog because we feel like Selma has a lot of outdoors whether it’s hunting , fishing or nature and everything we do, we try to highlight the positive in Selma”, said Rex Jones, President of Arts Revive.

According to Jones, Sims is now done working on Selma’s newest mural called the “Little Miami” which represents the image of “on the river” to take residents back to a time where they would spend their life growing up going to a little beach.

Sims want young artists to know that the world will tell them that they are no one, that they can’t do anything and they should go back home but he believes it’s the farthest thing from the truth.

“The talent is there, pursue the talent , it is a dedication , a life-long dedication, it does not come with a house , three children, a savings account and it is hard but it wouldn’t be possible without home . You can do , you can achieve , there is talent everywhere and not necessarily opportunity everywhere but the opportunity is going to come back where people know you, love you so go and do and compete and remember you are as good as anybody else in this world but you still will have to have somewhere where there is food, housing and someone to encourage you”, said Sims.