This weekend I’ve been without solid internet access, and Caroline and I have both been knee-deep in exams and final essays for the last week, so here’s a belated link-o-rama…
The New York Times has a story on Living Walls, centering on the removal of Hyuro’s mural a few months ago and now the removal of Roti’s mural. I hope that this does not dissuade artists or the amazing people behind Living Walls from doing more of the amazing work that they have become known for over the last three and a half years.
After seeing that Brooklyn Street Art is running a contest for the best street art photos of 2012, I thought to myself that maybe I should enter. Then I remembered that I’m not actually a great photographer. I’m competent and I still post photos to Flickr and Instagram, but there are a lot of people with a lot more talent than me. So instead of submitting to BSA’s contest and surely losing, I decided that I would just highlight a few of my favorite shots here on Vandalog. So, here are my 10 favorite photos that I took in 2012… Continue reading “My favorite shots of 2012”
The rise in success of Living Walls over the last 3 years has been fascinating to watch. This is their second year at Miami Basel but their first year there curating walls. Indoors they’ll have a booth, showing the works of a few international artists like La Pandilla, Interesni Kazki, and some of the artists listed above, as well as a few Atlanta favorites. Definitely looking forward to seeing their contribution.
Update: Creative Loafing has done a more extensive article on what’s gone on and is going on with the mural as more facts have become more clear. This one is probably the article to read.
Two things that I see as problematic interesting here:
The mural was painted legally and buffed illegally. I think that sort of speaks for itself.
The mural was buffed by some percentage of the local residents, and while other local residents support the mural, at least some of the signatures on the petition to save the mural are from people who don’t live nearby or even in the City of Atlanta. What right do we or Living Walls or GDOT have to say “We’re putting this mural here and you’d better like it.”? I think just going ahead and doing it is generally a much better way of putting up murals than months of community meetings. Once the mural is up though and if the community hates it, what should be done? I think it’s ridiculous to have a blank beige or grey wall in that spot rather than Roti’s beautiful figures, but I have never in my life had to drive by that wall on my way to work. Maybe that’s what people in the area want. That said, just because a few residents decided that they disliked the mural enough to go and paint over it does not mean that all the nearby residents or the residents of Atlanta hated the mural. And I haven’t heard any real reason why just going out and vandalising the mural was the step that had to be taken rather than holding some community forums to see what the general consensus was. I’m not saying that this mural should have been buffed (I signed the petition to save it) or that the angry activists who buffed the wall went about things the right way, but I think it’s worth thinking about, particularly, in this era of new muralism coming out of street art, how we can best balance the interests of the arts community and the local community. Thoughts?
Last month, I was at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta, but it’s only now that I’ve really had a chance to sit down and write about it. I thought that I was going to write this really long post, but the environment at Living Walls is difficult to capture in words, so this post isn’t nearly as long as I would have hoped.
Living Walls is, as far as I can tell, the best mural conference/festival/program going on right now in North America. Living Walls doesn’t tend to just invite all the artists who are painting at other mural events around the world. They invite good artists. Sometimes those artists are guys like Roa who are everywhere, and sometimes it’s women like Miso who have only ever painted one or two murals. As a result, Living Walls sets trends among mural festivals.
Lex and Sten
For their main conference this year, Living Walls really bucked popular trends and tried to put street art on a new track by having a festival made up almost entirely of female muralists. While guys like Gaia, LNY and I were still invited to speak at the lecture and panel portion of the conference, the murals by Lex&Sten and Indigo&Andrzej Urbanski were the only two where male artists were contributing.
Martina Merlini
While the murals weren’t as amazing on the whole as they were last year and the crowd of artists wasn’t nearly as rowdy (although that might have been a plus), this year’s Living Walls did bring some great work to Atlanta and really showed that there are some underrated female street artists and muralists out there who could be on the mural circuit as much as guys like Jaz or Roa. My hope and expecting is that the top-tier of artists from the conference will get more attention brought to their work thanks to Living Walls and some will start getting invited to a lot more mural festivals. As I’ve said in the past, I do not generally get excited to give artists preferential treatment based on them belonging to some underrepresented group, but I can see why an all-female Living Walls may have been the right move for this year even if the quality of the work did drop slightly.
Jessie and Katey
This Living Walls conference had more artists than ever before who were either more on the community mural side of the spectrum or had never painted a mural before. The results of that move were mixed, but there were some artists like Jessie&Katey and Mon Iker who took the opportunity and absolutely crushed it.
One thing I have to add isn’t so much about the art though. Whether Living Walls were inviting only artists that none of us have ever heard of before or stealing their line-up from Nuart, it would still be at least one of the best mural conferences in the world. That’s because Living Walls’ secret is in their amazing staff. Living Walls has best team of volunteers of any mural festival I’ve ever seen or could imagine. They are unbelievably dedicated to the festival and to getting more world-class street art and murals in Atlanta. Every day, the media team led by Alex Parrish was up until something like 4am putting together a video of what had gone on that day, and then they’d be back up at 7am to start filming all over again. Just last week, I was emailing with Keif Schleifer, their Logistics Director, who was spending her free time advising me on cherry-pickers. The day of the Vandalog Movie Night, volunteers showed up out of the blue to help us set up and run the show. Laura Calle and pretty much everyone else on staff who spent their own money to pay for the gas to drive myself and the artists around Atlanta. The drag queen who was a volunteer last year and this year helped arrange a drag show for the Living Walls Block Party. The artist assistants who stand in the hot sun alongside their artists all day long, offering any help they can. And of course, Monica Campana, the Executive Director of Living Walls, who is the amazing glue holding everything together without ever sleeping or slowing down. Everyone on staff or volunteering at Living Walls works at least as hard as the artists, and they were certainly working harder than me. After visiting two years in a row for just a few days each time, it honestly feels like I have family in Atlanta.
On September 16th, Hyuro‘s mural in Atlanta was buffed by members of the Living Walls team. As I wrote last month, the mural that Hyuro painted for this year’s Living Walls Conference was the highlight of the festival, but it was considered controversial by some of the local residents. Of course, street art and murals cannot last forever, nor should they, but it’s difficult to not be at least a little sad about the swift rejection of this mural by the community. Creative Loafing Atlanta has a great slideshow going over the story of the mural from start to finish.
Both Hyuro and and (Living Walls co-founder and executive director) made statements about the mural and it’s removal.
Hyuro:
Each person can take it the way they want to, because it is for everyone …and at the end, if it gets painted over, know that the gray paint will not hide the fears of no one, but if anything It will make those fears more visible.
Monica Campana:
Paint on this wall made for a beautiful mural, people talking about it made for a beautiful conversation. A public space was created and all of a sudden this dead intersection became more human. The mural belonged to all of us, to the ones that liked it and to the ones that didn’t, it was our dialogue, it was our challenge, but now it’s gone. Now we are back to ignoring that space again, now we are back at thinking that erasing the evidence will make us think this never happened. It hurt so much to paint over the wall, to destroy something someone else put so much heart and passion into. It was a painful process, but what hurt the most was that for the first time I felt like I had to censor myself. It was a weird feeling, a confusing and ugly feeling that I never want to experience again.
It is time for me to get a reasonable number of hours of sleep. Until I have to get up in the morning. Here’s what we didn’t get to write about on Vandalog this week:
These two prints from Tristan Eaton and Everlast come from 1xRun and benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, so you’ve got great artists, a great print studio and a great cause all in one package, but less than one week left to buy.
Buff Monster, David Meade and friends of Vandalog Hrag Vartanian and Adam COST will be speaking on a panel at Doyle New York next week in anticipation of their upcoming street art auction.
Endless Canvas’ Special Delivery warehouse show looks like it’s got some cool work from Swampy, GATS, Feral Child and others, but really it’s clear that photos do not do the show justice and that you had to be there.
Well, the big story this week was of course Hyuro’s wall under threat in Atlanta, but a lot more has been happening elsewhere on the web, plus I missed a week of link-o-rama when I was in Atlanta myself, so here’s what I’ve got to share:
Living Walls mentioned in the New York Times last week, but not because of Hyuro’s mural or even in the arts section. For some reason, some narrative was created about Living Walls relating to the recession. Well, whatever. I guess it’s a hook, and strange press is better than no press.
Everyone’s been quoting this Steve Powers interview where he says “Most Street art isn’t art and it isn’t street.” He’s such a provocateur (read: guy well-respected enough that the world allows him to be an asshole). Actually though, as annoying as the guy can be, he’s right. Particularly that most street art isn’t art. A lot of it is great graphic design or illustration or signpainting. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a misnomer that confuses a lot of people.
Hate President Bush? You’ll probably love this book.
A portion of Hyuro’s finished wall. Photo by Dustin Chambers.
Update: It looks like the latest news, as of August 27th, is that this mural is going to be removed.
My personal favorite mural at this year’s Living Walls Conference (which took place in Atlanta last week and we’ll be covering more from there soon) has to by Hyuro‘s mural in the Lakewood Heights neighborhood. It’s also proved to be the most controversial mural of the conference to date, with some people worried that the mural is too lewd for having in a public space, particular a space nearby a church, a mosque, a lot of street prostitution and a federal prison. Personally, I think the mural brightens up an otherwise drab wall and parking area.
Photo by RJ Rushmore
Hyuro painted a frame-by-frame animation (of 30-some frames) which can be seen by walking down the length of the mural. The animation is of a women growing fur and then shedding that fur, which turns into a wolf and walks away from her. It’s based on an animation she made last year using drawings:
The way I read the mural, it was empowering to women, urging them to be strong and go out into the world with the strength of a wolf. The way I’ve heard Hyuro explain it, the mural is about shedding one’s animal instincts for higher planes of thought. Either way, a great message.
But not every mural is for everyone, and any mural that everyone likes is almost sure to be a boring one. In a thread on the website i-Neighbors, some Lakewood Heights residents have complained that they find the mural offensive, with some even saying that they will now change their usual routes to work or school in order to avoid them or their children seeing it. I had a quick read through of the i-Neighbors posts, and while there are certainly some people who want the mural removed, most of the posts expressing in opinion one way or the other are from people who are okay with the mural or who love it. According to Alex Parrish, Living Walls’ Director of Communications, the response to the mural over social media has been overwhelmingly positive.
Hyuro working on her mural. Photo by RJ Rushmore.
Unfortunately, the local newsseems to be over-hyping a friendly discussion amongst neighbors into a full-blown controversy and now Hyuro’s mural truly is at risk of being removed. Eeven though Hyuro had the permission from the owner of the wall to paint there, the city of Atlanta does still have some control over what goes there. The initial plans that were submitted to the city included a sketch by Hyuro, but upon showing up at the wall, the artist changed her mind aboutsample work by Hyuro, and upon showing up at the wall, she decided what to paint given the shape of the wall and how her animation could fit there perfectly, as well as provide an uplifting message for the neighborhood. As a result, the mural was not really approved by the city. On Wednesday, Living Walls resubmitted plans to the city based on the finished mural. The final decision is still pending.
Hyuro’s mural in progress. Photo by RJ Rushmore
If you want to voice your opinion on the mural, you can email Camille Russell Love, director of Atlanta’s Director Office Of Cultural Affairs. Her email is CRLove -at- atlantaga.gov. Living Walls (and I) would really appreciate your support of this beautiful artwork. As I understand it, many of the people upset with the mural have contacted Love and other city officials, and so it’s extremely important that those who are in favor of keeping the mural make their voices heard as well.
