If you’re in downtown New London much, you’ve probably seen it. It’s a big, circular work of art filling the intersection of Golden and Green streets.

If you were walking, you may have stopped and given it some thought — the pizzaesque slices of yellow and red, the angular, Escheresque spirals of turquoise and ultramarine.

If you were driving, you probably rolled right over it with a sense of either obliviousness or guilt.

New London is a town of murals — whales, caryatids, guitars, people, scenes — art that needs the great outdoors, art that can’t be contained.

But all murals are on walls. The intriguing round masterpiece surrounding a manhole cover just down the street from the Dutch Tavern isn’t a mural. It’s more of a mandala.

The words painted along the eastern rim explain it a bit. They say, “In Memory of Chris Nelson.”

That also explains why it’s known as the Nelson Mandala.

A plaque on a nearby wall preserves more information. Chris Nelson was a man who loved New London. In fact, he loved cities. He believed in cities, believed they could be warm, human, inviting and enriching.

No wonder he left New York City and settled here. New York has plenty to offer, but it doesn’t have friends who meet once a year to repaint pavement in your memory.

Chris was a founding member of the Green Party in New London. He epitomized the Green philosophy of society working together to make life better for everyone. His insightful language — ”Chrisisms” — still grace the party bylaws.

He understood what makes New London tick — the art, music, ideas, ideals, idealisms, idiosyncrasies, the nitty-gritty of artisanship and the sense of a nearby sea.

Like a lot of people in New London, he was well educated but found peace in a blue collar profession. He majored in political philosophy at Yale but earned his living as a shipwright. He was one of few people in the world who could caulk the old-fashioned way.

In a sense, Chris lived political philosophy. If he wasn’t building a boat, refurbishing a historical building on Green Street or thrashing his way to victory on a basketball court, he was trying to make New London a better city.

He pushed for establishing Riverside Park. He helped organize Earth Day. In ways too quiet for most people to notice, he advocated innovative changes for the better. If he wasn’t advocating at town hall, he was opining at the Dutch.

He served on the city’s planning & zoning commission, bringing to it a political philosophy that was informed and insightful, somehow both realistic and idealistic. He warned about a city being planned and zoned to death. He wanted to see neighborhoods develop organically into functional clusters of business and residence.

I knew Chris from the anti-war efforts of a few — too few — citizens who objected to the invasion of Iraq. He struck me as one of the most intelligent and insightful people I have ever met. Every conversation with him was interesting. I always came away with raised awareness.

Everyone else felt the same about him.

And that’s why once a year, early on a Sunday in the spring, a bunch of his friends and family come together at the intersection of Green and Golden to repaint the mandala in memoriam.

They mix traffic paint just right. They sweep off dirt and scrub off tread marks. They try to keep their lines straight.

They hold themselves to a high standard. Then they repair to the Dutch to recover and recall.

Chris held himself to a high standard, too. Everyone admired his intelligence and idealism and thought his flaws insignificant, even beautiful. But he was brutally critical of himself. Too critical.

He loved his city but not himself. He died in December of 2013. He was 43.

Editor's Note: This version corrects when Chris Nelson died.

Glenn Alan Cheney is a writer, translator and managing editor of New London Librarium. He can be reached at glenn@NLLibrarium.com.