Tunnel Vision

I had never ventured on foot into the Boulevard Tunnel until April 12, when Living Walls had asked for volunteers to help prepare the walls for an artist who was going to come paint a mural.  Since I don't drive to Cabbagetown or Grant Park often, the tunnel is more something I go past on the way to Caramba than it is something I go through.  I thought of it as a dreary place but not a horrible place.  But for those nearby, it was more than an eyesore.  It was a place that felt unsafe and maybe was.  Nicki Braxley, a Cabbagetown resident, decided to do something about it a couple of years ago and started the Boulevard Tunnel Initiative.  Since then, the city has replaced some railings and a security camera has been installed in one of the stairwells.  But the big leap forward was when Living Walls took on the task of turning the tunnel into a destination.  Living Walls -- an organization that does magic with the resources available to it, which are long on passion and commitment, and short on cash -- brought in the artist MOMO from New York to paint the tunnel.

The Boulevard Tunnel Initiative had organized a clean up and then Living Walls staff and volunteers showed up to prep the walls for MOMO.  There were a half-dozen or so of us there, painting with rollers.  I was only there for a few hours, but it was unexpectedly hard work. (Iain had spent the weekend in Athens, and when I went to pick him up the next day he said, "Mom, there's something on your face.  It looks like paint.")

MOMO arrived in town a few days later and began to work.  First the walls were painted with blocks of color, then the boundaries between the blocks disappeared, and then designs were superimposed over the painted walls.  An army of volunteers was involved.  I took off a day from work and helped one day.  It was an amazing thing to watch.

The project took a little longer than originally planned at least in part because of the weather; you can't paint walls in the rain.  But it did get done, and after it was complete, Iain and Caroline and I went to see it in early May.  It is an amazing piece of work.

Can art transform the tunnel?  Probably not all by itself, but as Nicole Braxley told Rebecca Burns, it may increase pedestrian presence in the tunnel, and that should help.  

After taking a few pictures that day, we walked up to Noni's for lunch.  On the way back, two men from Fort Lauderdale asked us if the bus that stopped at Boulevard and Edgewood went to Five Points.  We had to admit we had no idea, but pointed them toward the nearby MARTA station on Decatur Street.  It was only afterwards that I realized I should have told them about the new murals in the tunnel.  

Next time.

At the Summerhill Fall Fest

Last Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours working at the Living Walls table at the 2nd Annual Summerhill Fall Fest in the Summerhill neighborhood.  Summerhill is a neighborhood adjacent to Turner Field, south of downtown.  Early settlers in the area were freed slaves and Jewish immigrants.  Leo Frank, convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan in 1913 and lynched in 1915, had spent time in Summerhill.  The opening and closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics were there, in the stadium that later was converted to Turner Field.

There's a small commercial area on Georgia Avenue near Turner Field.  Most of the buildings seem to not have been occupied for a long time, although there are seems to be lots of relatively new housing nearby.  It's the sort of area that should have a neighborhood bar and a pizza place and a convenience store that neighborhood kids can walk to.  This is the area where Living Walls worked last summer, putting 10 murals up in August.  They are amazing.

(Better photos than mine are on line, especially for Nanook's mural that I cut off most of the portrait on the left inadvertently - check out posts like this one or the Living Walls website.)

I was there, with several Living Walls staff members, for the first shift, including the beginning of the festival.  It was a slow start, with more festival volunteers on the street than festival attendees.  Jasmine, who handles media for Living Walls, reviewed with us the mission of Living Walls -- Living Walls seeks to activate and engage communities through street art.  That sounds right to me.  And I don't know if the incredible work that Living Walls artists, volunteers, and staff did on Georgia Avenue last summer will help activate the street or not, but we heard that one of the vacant store fronts would re-open soon as a convenience store.  It was clear that developers and homeowners have invested in the neighborhood, and there was a neighborhood group that was organized enough to present the 2nd Annual Summerhill Fall Fest.  So it seems to me it is just a matter of time until something happens on Georgia Avenue.

Jasmine told us about a conversation she had had with someone who ended up donating to Living Walls.  He asked her about overhead costs of the organization.  None, she told him.  He was incredulous and asked her how much Living Walls paid her.  Nothing, she said.  No one gets paid.  They have no office space.  I told her that this response didn't surprise me at all, that from the outside it is hard to believe that all this happens with no deep pockets behind it, no paid staff, just passionate people who really believe in what they do who leverage a small budget into an amazing event.  Living Walls does get really valuable support -- mostly in-kind, as I understand it -- from a number of sponsors, but it's a huge commitment from a small group of unpaid staff that make all this work. 

And as long as we are on the subject of Living Walls' sponsors, I always assumed that Delta Airlines was a sponsor, since every year Living Walls brings international artists to Atlanta for the event, but note their absence from the list of sponsors.  This is their home town, and they should be supporting it.  I think I'll send them a note and tell them that.

Art Works

I started to write "Everyone wants the place they live to be better" but that might not be true.  There probably are people who think the place they live is perfect and cannot possibly be improved.  I am pretty fond of my neighborhood but I still invest a lot of my mental bandwidth in thinking about how it and the city I now live in could be better.

So last weekend I went to two meetings about making the city better.  On Saturday, I attended part of the 5th Annual Neighborhood Summit downtown at the Loudermilk Center for the Regional Community.  This was organized by The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.  I was not able to be there for the entire program but did attend a workshop on "Creative Spaces:  Arts in Community."  Monica Campana from Living Walls was scheduled to present in that workshop but wasn't able to attend.  That was too bad because there was a lot of interest in Living Walls among the attendees, and in her absence the moderator, Eddie Granderson from the City's Public Art Program, ended up trying to answer them as best he could (more about that later).  The speakers who did make it were Ruth Bracewell from the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center and David Burt from the Hapeville Arts Alliance.

Ms. Bracewell described an amazing array of programming and other activities that the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center provides in Madison, Georgia.  The Center has staff and a budget and although I am sure that money is always short and volunteers with a passion for the arts and for the community help fill the gaps, the Center is part of the city's cultural landscape and presumably has been for some time.

Mr. Burt, on the other hand, told us about how he and two other people started the Hapeville Arts Alliance from nothing.  It was a great story about how people who care can make the most of the resources that are available and create something really valuable for their community.  Hapeville now has the Norton Arts Center, with gallery space and studio space for artists, and the Alliance recently hosted a very successful Arts Walk.  It was really impressive what a small group of passionate volunteers have been able to do.

When the discussion opened for questions and answers, there were a couple questions for Ms. Bracewell and Mr. Burt, but at least half of the question the audience had were about Living Walls, and they asked them, even though Ms. Campana wasn't there.  The first questions were from people with concerns -- what is the process for getting approval?  How are neighborhoods involved?  Mr. Granderson answered those in a very evenhanded way, acknowledging the challenges last year and the lack of clarity in the past about what the City's requirements were, but there were still more questions.  A woman from the Pittsburgh neighborhood said that the neighborhood had been treated with disrespect by Living Walls, that there was no need to bring in artists from other countries, that her grandson was an artist.

But they were not the only people who had come to learn more about Living Walls.  There were people who were interested in having Living Walls bring art to their neighborhoods, there were people who wanted to know how to volunteer (I raised my hand to answer that question, when Mr. Granderson could not), and some skepticism that the City actually had the authority to keep private property owners from putting murals of their choosing on their buildings.  (Mr. Granderson was very careful about his choice of words in answering this question, but I do wonder if the City's requirements would stand up to a serious court challenge.)

The next day I attended part of the colab summit at Woodruff Arts Center.  The highlight of the day was Susan Booth's talk on how the arts aren't just an extra thing, an ornament, something for when company is in town, but if an integral part of the life of city can make the city and its people better.  It was one of the best talks I ever heard.  Ms. Booth made the case that we need to see the arts as something that is not a separate thing but something that is important to our city and its future.  Serious engagement with the arts builds empathy and the ability to see multiple points of view ("multiple truths," as Ms. Booth put it) and makes us better people and better citizens.

Imagine a city informed by the twin tenets of emotional empathy and comfort with multiple truths.  Imagine a town square where dialogue replaces rhetoric, where compassion displaces rush to judgment, where because we exercise the well-honed skill of holding multiple truths, we are able to sit with people whose voice, values, and lives are different than our own.  We are able to lean in and listen and talk *with* the other, not just *about* the other.

Do your civic duty and make the city a better place.  Grab a friend and go to a performance.  Art on the Beltline is in full swing, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra season has started.  Go on an urban treasure hunt to find Living Walls' murals.  Check out what's happening at your favorite theater.  Go somewhere you've never been.  Do something.