Painted revival

By Rosemary Ponnekanti There's a flying turtle on the restroom wall at Portland Avenue Park, a crowd of orange people on South 56th Street, colorful goats near the Interstate 5 underpass.

Hallucinations? No, just three out of seven murals going up on walls in south and east Tacoma. And they aren’t just ordinary murals, either: Part of a City of Tacoma pilot project, they’re training grounds for artists, symbols of hope for communities, and possibly the start of a movement that would see art pop up on blighted walls around the city for years to come.

Trina Love is one of the 19 student artists in the mural project, and she summed up the project’s two goals: to teach professional artists how to paint murals, and to create some for needy neighborhoods. Usually a small-scale painter, Love heard about the mural project, organized by the Tacoma Arts Commission, just after she’d been asked to create a sanctuary-size mural for her church. Daunted by the idea, she applied for the project, hoping to learn mural skills as well as work with other artists and contribute to the community.

“I had always wanted to do mural painting,” Love says, “and Tacoma needs a lot of artistic TLC.”

The mural training project got going last month, funded by city arts and neighborhood grant programs. Five local artists with mural experience were hired to teach the student artists, who usually work in other media or paint at a smaller scale. A sixth project involved a team of local youth, also learning from professionals.

After some brainstorming, the teams went to work on the walls of the restrooms at Portland Avenue Park, creating cheerful designs of robots, flying turtles and mythical people and animals designed to infuse local kids with a spirit of playfulness and hope. Meanwhile, the city sent out a call to neighborhood groups for any interested in getting a mural. Six more locations were chosen in an area that stretches from the Hilltop down to Fern Hill and from South Tacoma Way to Portland Avenue. Most of the walls had been tagged or were in need of repair.

Artist teams met with residents, discussing everything from local history to things the community was proud of, and came up with designs. Walls were prepped, and painting began, with all murals due to be finished at the end of this month. Lead artists got an hourly wage, student artists got a stipend and free training, and communities got murals.

The result, so far, seems excellent.

“We’re pretty excited,” says Leslie Young, representative for the Whitman Area Neighbors who are sponsoring a mural on a South M Street wall just uphill from the I-5 underpass.

The wall, long and low and until recently covered in graffiti and blackberries, wasn’t, as Young puts it, “the most welcoming of places.” This week, though, work began on a design by lead artist Joni Joachims involving goats (because a local hill was recently cleared of blackberries by a goat herd), trees and even a toy train. Joachims, who has worked on other Tacoma murals, says it’s intended to be humorous, colorful and attention-getting for drive-by viewing.

“As an entrance to our neighborhood, this could be a great spot to say ‘Welcome,’ ” says Young.

Attracting attention was also the reason Thomas Erskine applied for the mural that now stretches along the St. Vincent de Paul building on South 56th Street. The executive director wanted to let more people know how much his charity helps Tacomans in need: “When people see it, they’ll ask the next question, and we’ll explain what we do,” he says.

What they do, Erskine sums up, is charity in the Latin definition – love. It’s a meaning that the site’s muralists – a youth team led by artists Chris Jordan and Kenjii Stoll from hip-hop nonprofit Fab-5 – are doing their best to paint.

“The mural is a narrative that goes deeper than handing someone a loaf of bread,” explains Jordan, taking a break from marking out the wall’s design. “It goes from left to right, moving from cool colors reflecting where the community is through to warm colors saying where we want to be, a better place.” Jordan’s team, ranging from 13 to 21 in age, each came up with their own section design, moving from green freeways and streets through yellows to orangey-pink crowds of people and a shining Mount Rainier.

Erskine, a former commercial painter himself, is really pleased with the whole project. “It’ll help these kids,” he says. “The process they’ll learn, how to think and construct and plan, it’ll serve them their whole lives. It’s just like a business.”

Learning painting skills is another benefit for the student artists. Techniques like scaling and working with spray cans; practicalities such as coping with difficult surfaces, codes and budgets; communication skills such as talking with neighborhood groups and collaborating with other artists are all things that the project teaches.

Kelda Martensen – who’s leading a mural in the Fern Hill district that goes from ferny vintage postcard to pixilated abstraction across an enormous bubble-gum blue wall – sums it up: “It’s one thing to be a practicing artist. It’s quite another to be a muralist.”

But there’s another less tangible benefit to artists: involvement with community.

“I get the chance to develop the kind of mural I want to see in Tacoma,” says Chris Sharp, an artist and sign painter who’s leading the mural at South 28th Street and Portland Avenue. His design, still in progress, will be similar to the one on the west wall of the park restrooms – sketchy, painterly strokes, ambiguous but bold figures, bright colors.

“It’s like my civic duty, a contribution. I also get to spend time in a part of town I’m not normally in, to meet and talk with people. That’s a valuable experience.”

Says Trinda Love: “I really loved the idea of bringing something to local neighborhoods that would be special ... (like the) Fremont troll in Seattle.”

Maybe the biggest benefit, though, is to the neighborhoods. Empty lots, tagged walls, neglected buildings are getting a bright new look. And it’s been shown – with projects like Seattle’s ArtWorks and San Francisco’s Street Smarts, as well as Tacoma sites such as Embellish Salon – that murals discourage illegal graffiti.

“Murals do work,” says Jeremy Gregory, a former ArtWorks instructor who’s created a whimsical design of flying grandparents handing down wisdom for the Hilltop mural. A former graffitist himself, Gregory knows what he’s talking about: “There’s kind of rules in graffiti. You don’t scribble on something you respect.”

You do have to be vigilant about cleaning up tags that break that rule, he says, and the city is preparing for this by coating every mural with a surface that allows for easy scraping of unwanted paint.

On the whole, though, the mural project is something that the city wants to see expanded.

“We’re hoping neighborhoods will get inspired to apply for murals, and that we’ll now have a stable of trained artists who can paint them,” says city arts administrator Amy McBride.

“Especially in South Tacoma, you see a lot of blight,” points out Young. “If we have more art like this, it would really add to the quality and character of neighborhoods.”

Says Gregory: “We need more art around in public.”

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568

rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com