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We got Frank
almost five years ago. One of the draws to getting the building itself was
this long wall we had, this exposed wall, and it was a pretty easy thing to set up to start
contacting basically our friends and say
we've got a 30 foot by 18 foot wall, do you guys want to come put a mural up?
Having that blank space, that blank canvas, we kind of
had the idea to do something of the public art persuasion. We didn't really know what,
we knew that we wanted it to be something fun, something that changed and kept
the energy moving, and so we kind of made up these rules as we went where
we wanted an artist to install monthy, we wanted to buff it at the end of the month
give them 48 hours to install kind of
anyting-went type of scenario
and really letting them kind of speak.
The original project started where we literally had
an artist lined up every month.
On day one of the month the wall gets buffed the mural goes up and then it's up for
28-29 days. There had to be e a sense of urgency
just because, like Jeff said, it is up there for such a short period of time
but also it just kind of added this element of
you know, put up or shut up. We've got 48 hours
Focus is local and regional art and we're trying to take care of folks in our backyard,
special attention to a lot of times artists that are lesser known or haven't really had
this sort of platform yet.
A lot of the artists have never done anything of
this style this caliber and brut, so it's kind of just
challenging them a little bit. You can design something on paper and a computer but can you put it on a 30 foot wall?
So I'll do black, you do...
You know mocking stuff up digitally on the computer doesn't really kind of
have the life that it does once you paint it and there's
like the texture and like
like the roughness of the wall. It's kind of really cool.
But it's amazing how
rough the stuff looks up close and then, stepping back
on the street it actually looks really good
at least to us.
The next four months have been sponsored by Cap Metro so
we were kind of given an outline to keep it, to try to keep it transportation themed
I didn't mind having having -those limits, those critera
yeah the criteria set. Having like a theme to work with. It probably would have
been a little bit harder to come up with something like "Just make art!"
This came up with a phrase like "Taking it easy"
you know like, getting on the bus just not really having to worry about traffic and whatnot.
We live and work in East Austin and have seen a lot of the changes
and a lot of the hand-painted signs that
that you'll see one day and then and a new business will come in and that
hand-painted sign's gone.
So they're putting all those guys in now
I hope that something doesn't get built on this parking lot that obscures it and that we
keep the interest going and that the community
engaged enough that there's always something new up there.
If for whatever reason a skyscraper, and it will inevitably they're going to build next to us
we are in downtown Austin and there's an empty lot next to us
when it goes straight up and we lose that physical art wall
maybe that was it's time and as the Buddhists say,
move on. -Dirty hippy. I don't know, you know. We're just
playing here and having fun in every capacity.
And keeping that creative energy going in Austin.