No Starving Artists at Lincoln Super C
There aren’t a lot of places in Nebraska where you can see Renaissance artwork mashed up with convenience store drinks and snacks, but there is at least one.
When you walk into Super C #3 at 33rd and Sheridan in Lincoln, and glance up, you might assume you were looking at a print from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Look a little closer and you’ll notice some fun tweaks to the work of the old masters.
There’s nods to Roman mosaics, albeit with a mega-sized Super C refillable mug instead of a cantharus. Some of Michelangelo’s most memorable frescos, but everyone’s driving a convertible and one has fuzzy dice. Dionysus the Greek god of wine about to dig into a cheeseburger.
It’s the work of Lincoln artist Tom Meyers. When exactly it was put up, she can’t recall, but Super C manager Patty Brown said the artwork goes back a ways.
“Maybe 15, 20 years,” Brown said. “It was here before I was.”
The stoic faces of the paintings have been witness to a couple of big lottery wins as well. In 2021, a grandson bought his grandmother a Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer Scratch ticket as a joke, but it wound up winning her $50,000. In 2015, a regular player stopped in for gas, picked up a Powerball ticket while checking out and won $10,000.
Meyers work can be seen all over Lincoln, whether you know it or not. At Lazlo’s in the Haymarket there’s a mural he painted of employees in the 1930s Great Depression WPA style. Both Lincoln locations of Sultan’s Kite—a Mediterranean takeout spot known for their gyro and shawarma—feature large paintings of middle eastern and Mediterranean scenes. Myers spent a year as the artist-in-residence at the Cornhusker Marriot and created dozens of pastel artworks.
Even though Meyers’ work has been a staple of the Super C experience for more than a decade, people are still discovering it, said assistant manager Lindsey Philips.
“We’ll have people who have been coming here for years and they’ll look up and say, ‘When did those get here?’”
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