After a year away due to the pandemic, the Fresh Paint Mural Festival kicked off June 5 with an ambitious agenda of creating 10 large murals on 10 spaces in the downtown and Mason Square sections of Springfield inside of a week. On Saturday morning the final touches to the last pieces were laid down, ready for an afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony.
At various locations across the city, buildings ranging from one-story high structures to seven-story towers became canvases for internationally renowned artists to show parts of Springfield and its history that few were aware of and document it for all to see and appreciate.
Britt Ruhe, director for the Common Wealth Mural Collaborative, the producers of the Fresh Paint Festival, said the COVID-19 pandemic forced cancelation of the 2020 festival and made preparations for the 2021 event even harder than they should have been.
“It took a tremendous amount of work to coordinate everything to make this possible,” she said Saturday. “We had 11 apprentice muralists-in-training who operated as staff and worked with the community at painting parties. We had our own staff and maybe 20 volunteers all working for this year’s festival.”
The Fresh Paint Festival picks up from an art movement started in Springfield in the late 1960s and early ’70s that saw the creation of more than 30 public murals in the Mason Square area. Today only one remains.
City officials, art aficionados and friends organized a special ribbon-cutting to pay tribute to two of the original mural creators in Springfield. Nelson Stevens, 83, was a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and one of the creators of the AfriCOBRA movement. Stevens brought art students from the campus to the Mason Square area to create murals celebrating black culture and advancements. Before he was done, Stevens is credited with creating more than 30 indoor and outdoor murals in Springfield.
Stevens said the mural movement started in Mexico as a means to educate illiterate peasants. The idea was revived by the Black community.
“Then in 1967 it was revived in Chicago to celebrate our history. I was able to get credit for the students and pay so we could continue it here,” Stevens said.
But the mural that started the movement wasn’t created by Stevens. Instead, he credits another Black artist, Donald Blanton, with painting the first mural dedicated to Black culture in Springfield. Blanton painted the so-called Heritage mural, now seen on the side of Mosque 13 on State Street, and newly repainted by Kay Douglas as part of the 2021 Fresh Paint Festival.
Blanton, now 79, said Saturday that the building then housed a beauty supply business, and the owner gave his permission to paint the outside.
“I started the rough sketches but then realized we had no place to put it. I came and asked here at Robbins Beauty Supply and he said yes.”
Blanton said he drew the outlines and he and his brother painted in the colors.
Blanton and his brother went on to create a Black-centric arts group in Springfield when the established arts league would not accept black people.
The 2021 Fresh Paint Festival did not benefit from lots of design meetings and consultations over what the murals should be. It was too dangerous for meetings. Consequently, much of what the 2021 murals look like depends on the artistic integrity of the artists.
“This year the festival was driven by the pandemic,” Ruhe said. “We met with building owners and most decided what style they wanted on their buildings. Next year, when we can all get together again, we will hold meetings to work up community-driven designs”
The festival gave most artists direction as to the content of the works, but after that, each was left to his or her discretion.
Murals produced for the 2021 Fresh Paint Festival included: ARCY’s creation at La Fiorentino at 883 Main St.; Wane One’s mural at 1183 Main St.; the Howard Drew mural by Eric Okdeh at the intersection of Dwight and Harrison streets; Jeff Henriquez at 232 Worthington St.; Stash’s abstract on the Worthington Street side of the Taylor Street parking garage; Betsy Casanas’s mural on the Mason Square Library; Ryan Murray at 811 Main St.; Western Mass Portrait Painters work at 827 State St.; NERO and Souls NYC combined work at the MLK Family Services agent at 3 Rutland St. and Kay Douglas’s work on Mosque 13
Connecticut artist ARCY had a 120 by 20-foot wall alongside La Fiorentino Bakery at 883 Main St. He said the Italian heritage of the area was an important consideration as he developed the work he produced for the festival.
“Cultural significance comes into play. The community around where the wall is located, its all the South End of Springfield. That gave us immediate direction to give back to the Italian community here,” he said.
The artist was able to sketch out his design in his studio, then make a transparency to project onto the wall for the final layout. Then it took more than 300 cans of spray paint to simulate the sepia tones of photographs as if from an old family album.
“I think it matters what the public thinks,” he said, as he applied color to the wall. “It’s their wall, not mine. I leave it with the community, so I have to make sure what I do hits home for everybody.”
ARCY is well known to Western Mass. viewers. Apart from his national presence, he has worked at the Eastern States Exposition muralizing various sections of the Coliseum among other works.
Portions of each of the works included a section actually produced by community members at painting parties held over the winter.
Renowned artist Stash watched Saturday as an apprentice and his crew attached 4-foot square sections of PolyTab material to a section of the Taylor Street parking garage.
A Brooklyn artist, Stash was tasked with painting the garage and, at the same time, including a section produced by budding community artists of all ages. He worked out his colorful abstract work by photographing the paint splatters on the floor of his studio and incorporating those into the final work. For the lower sections, he transposed the splatter designs onto the PolyTab material and gave the community painters a “paint-by-numbers” replication of his work for them to complete. Those 4-by-4sections were pasted to the garage exterior walls.
Ruhe said Stash had free rein to produce his mural. He is well known in the graffiti school of artwork, and when he was 17 years old his canvases hung alongside other street art greats such as Keith Haring and Michael Basquiat. Stash is credited with making the graffiti style acceptable in the general community. Now, Springfield painters can brag that they had a hand in creating a Stash original.
Howard Drew is not a familiar name to most in Springfield, but should be, and will be from now on.
“A hundred years ago Howard was quite a runner,” Philadelphia muralist Eric Okdeh said. “He supposedly made his cleats by driving roofing nails through the soles of his shoes.”
Drew had to drop out of the Olympic trials due to an injury, dashing his hopes for an Olympic win. He may well have done it, too. The man who ran second to him in the trials went on to win the gold.
Okdeh presented Drew several times on the tower at 185 Dwight St., first as a teen, wearing a skimmer and holding a flag. The young patriot Howard Drew stands five stories high. Other images show him as an Olympic-level runner, a World War I soldier and later as one of the first Black judges to take the bench in Connecticut. Drew was a cornerstone member of the civil rights movement in Springfield in the 1950s.
Jeff Henriquez said his design for 232 Worthington St. is actually two years old. He created it for the 2019 festival but was told he could not show a Black girl. It depicts his young niece as an artist in front of a colorful background.
When he was invited back to the 2021 Festival he said he was using the same motif as last time.
“The design is the design,” he said, with a shrug.
The mural includes the brightly colored work ‘Worthy” in honor of the apartment block up the street and, of course, the name of the street.
Henriquez’s piece takes up the top three stories of the building, above the Black Lives Matter mural painted in 2019.
For all the wow factor of stories-tall figures and incredibly bright color splashes on otherwise dark streets, it turns out the biggest benefactor of the Fresh Paint murals may be the City of Springfield, its businesses and its people.
According to studies commissioned after the 2019 Festival, having bright, meaningful murals in public spaces in Springfield increases property values, improves peoples’ sense of security and increases walking traffic in the area of the murals.
The studies conducted by the UMass Design Center and by consultant Jessica Payne, of Springfield, saw a four-times return on investment from the 2019 festival. For every dollar donated to the nonprofit city business saw $4 in return. Ruhe said surveys conducted in downtown Springfield indicated that 73% of respondents had an improved sense of safety and walkability in the downtown since the murals went up.
The Link LonkJune 13, 2021 at 06:20AM
https://www.masslive.com/news/2021/06/fresh-paint-festival-cuts-ribbon-on-10-murals-celebrating-springfield.html
Fresh Paint Festival cuts ribbon on 10 murals celebrating Springfield - MassLive.com
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