Murals and Sustainable Design: New Contexts

"SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES" 

A new How & Nosm mural in Rochester NY, part of their Wall Therapy program

When it comes to community identity, there is nothing like a mural to trigger dialogue. With the mural movement in full swing almost every large and medium city in our nation now has murals, and new mural organizations and initiatives are popping up everywhere.

From San Luis Obipso to Boston  and Rochester, NY these new murals, and aesthetics, are forcing city councils and residents to struggle with complex issues.

These issues range from first amendment and property rights to sign codes and developing a process to approve designs. These are healthy conversations that promote civic participation and engagement in the arts. Who are we as a people? What images define us? What makes a mural offensive to someone? In July for example a David Choe  mural in Hawai’i was painted over hours after it was finished. Little did local residents know this might have been a once in a lifetime opportunity to be stewards to one of the most important and talented artists of our generation. 

Artist David Choe in his studio. Image: Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A new ROA mural in Rochester, NY has perked controversy as well. Synthesis Collaborative who hosted the well know artist and many others in a program called Wall Therapy.  The organizers write:

“Essentially, what we are doing is a community-level intervention in the form of mural art in the public space.  The walls are our vehicle for inspiring and rehabilitating our community.  We are intervening visually to address a fundamental collective need of our citizenry, the need for inspiration.  In addition and quite literally, the walls on which our “therapists” will paint are being resurfaced and rehabilitated…given new life and energy.”

ROA in Rochester with Wall Therapy
Photo: Stephen S. Reardon www.uglypancakes.com

Cities that have established mural arts and public arts programs have to contend with these issues and have managed to organize and rally support when controversy arises. With public art it almost always does, and sometimes this is better than being ignored. I think it’s fair to say that most people hope their art inspires, unify and promote all things good. However many well intentioned muralists with no community design and feedback process are running into challenges, especially if they are parachuting in with little knowledge for the places they are working.

My question is what is the responsibility of the artist for contributing to and offering meaning to these conversations – or is it our job to paint and move on?  What is the responsibility of the host agency? Is the responsibility of the host to employ an additional step to site preparation and planning, specifically a Community Arts Integration (CAI) plan? I’ve been watching as this process has taken root since I first started writing about the concept several years ago. In implementing a CAI plan artists and hosts are provided with a wealth of information and strong context for the project.

The idea that artists are critical to the sustainable design and holistic development of our infrastructure is an idea whose time has come. It’s great to see groups like Wall Therapy making the leap towards the inevitable changes we, as a species are engaged in. 

 

Giving Thanks for Community Arts Network in a Time of Innovation

This is the time to give thanks. I want to give a special thanks to the Community Arts Network (CAN). The site was archived not long ago, and will no longer be publishing new works. It was a terrible loss for many in the field. Art in the Public Interest/ CAN emerged from Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland’s work on High Performance Magazine (1978 - 1997). Thanks to the Open Folklore project (a joint effort of the Indiana University Libraries and the American Folklore Society) the CAN site has been archived, so we have a great encyclopedia of resources to draw upon.

We live in the Sonoran Desert, so this is winter garden time. We water new seedlings daily until their roots are strong enough to be transplanted to our specially prepared garden beds. As the plants grow we water them less and less, allowing for their roots to grow strong and reach deep into the soil.

Loosing CAN left me feeling transplanted, exposed. How will community artists and cultural workers inspire, dialogue and report back to one another? Many of us in the field simply can’t afford to fly around to conferences. We are not connected to large institutions, foundations or trust funds. Our base of support tends to be the community itself, and in times of economic despair, innovation is key to our survival. During these times our roots sink deeper into our neighborhoods where we are nurtured and watered.

Community animators play a unique roll in civilization. We have been here throughout human history, in various manifestations, the Griot, Kokopelli, Blogger. We work with neighborhoods, community centers, schools, hospitals and prisons, providing a place for people to advance their humanity, to tune into their emotions, their community and the environment. We work with groups of people to breath new life into forgotten or neglected places. It’s here in the grassroots we find the innovators, the experimenters, garage and basement cultures that have always produced the great art of the day. When larger and more powerful organizations appropriate ideas, concepts and movements it wipes the slate clean for those in the grassroots. It’s a benchmark, a sign of growth and success.

A friend of ours recently met with a community foundation. The guy she met with was very nice, and fond of her organization. He was familiar with the language and concepts of Community Cultural Development (CCD), but not with CAN or any of the hundreds of CAN writers who have joyfully labored in the field over the past 50 years. He coolly explained that the foundations resources would be distributed to several larger groups, and perhaps she could “collaborate” with them. My friend went on to contact each of the larger groups. The funds would be used to study “gaps” in programming. As she shared this story we joked about how not to become part of that gap!

So as the language, strategies and tactics of our movement have been appropriated, those with resources have figured out how to prevent resources from filling an ever widening gap. And this seems to be a national trend.

The fall out is that millions of young people are going without arts education, millions more are deprived of the ability to define the culture or cultures of their choosing through community theater, installations, orchestras, community writing and poetry projects.

There are many schools of thought on this issue as CCD expands beyond traditional art forms. These ideas are being discussed among communities of artist, teachers and scholars worldwide.

Artists and Scholars in Public Life meets annually with dozens of workshops and presentations to participate in. The National Guild for Community Arts Education also meets annually in various locations around the country. The US Social Forum is a massive open space for artist activists with a free wall, children's art village and my favorite the “Creativity Lab” . Alternate Roots hosts a five day gathering that is packed with youth centered programming, open space, fantastic workshops and time to organize. The 35th Anniversary ROOTS Fest 2011: Many Communities, One Voice, will be June 22-26, 2011 in West Baltimore, MD.

The landscape for CCD has changed since 2004, when Art in the Public Interest Published The State of the Field of Community Cultural Development: Something New Emerges, by Linda Frye Burnham, Steven Durland and Maryo Gard Ewell. For example in Australia there is an interesting debate about the effectiveness of CCD. Phoebe Coyne has written number of interesting articles, including “Community Cultural Development Is So Last Century”.

I'm not sure if that's the case, but I do know that for the past 32 years Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland worked tirelessly to keep us connected, informed, inspired and thinking about these issues. And for that I am deeply thankful.

Murals Hitting a Brick Wall

Recently Destroyed Mural in a Texas School

I’m not sure what going on in Mural-land these days, but there sure seems to be a ton of press of murals hitting a brick wall, if you excuse the expression.

In the mission district of San Francisco muralist Simon Norris ran into a little snag when attempting to paint a community mural over an existing work of art. The story seems to end well in that a collaboration has emerged and everyone learned something about mural etiquette. I have to say, hats off to the artists in this one, for being open to change and modeling a win win solution.

Outside of Houston, Texas, a the school principal had a beautiful 14 year old mural destroyed. Now they want a brand shinny new one. Several parents pointed out that the mural had become an integral part of the school culture and life.

Shifting over to Prescott, Arizona, as widely reported, muralists there were told to lighten up the skin tone of faces in a school mural. "It is being lightened because of the controversy," said Mural Director Wall in an interview by Arizona Republic writer Dennis Wagner. Wall added that "they want it to look like the children are coming into light." Apparently the artists decided not to comply with the school principal’s edict to lighten the children's faces. You can read many hundreds of comments to this story. The story ends well when (almost) everyone acknowledges they made a huge mistake. Nope, no racial profiling here.

Next we go to Boston, MA where the economy is to blame. For the past two years students have been working on the "Strong Past...Proud Future" participatory mural project. Now they have hit a snag, money.

It’s exciting to see the whole person engagement methodology being employed. Now funding has become part of the project itself. So here is a chance for you to participate and experience the power of community arts! Start by clicking here and let's help these youth see their project through!

Murals continue to be a great way to foster community, and national dialogues. As the participatory mural movement expands there are bound to be growing pains. It’s easy to destroy a mural as a knee jerk reaction, and all too often artists don’t know, or simply choose not to deal with the hassle of invoking their rights . On the other hand muralists and organizations make mistakes, and that’s natural, we all do. That’s where elders, teachers and best practices come in. We are not the first generation of muralists to participate in democratic art making. The great thing is is that these elders exist in almost every city large and small. You just have to seek them out.