The New York City subway system tends to be associated less with art, and more with trash and rats and strange smells. Some ambitious projects are starting to change that–and Baltimore artists are helping out.
Tag: street art
Baltimore Street Artist Brightens Walls in Liberia
The Nathaniel Varney Massaquoi Elementary and Junior High School in Liberia has been closed since last August, when the country was crippled by the rapid spread of Ebola. Last week, the school reopened–and students were welcomed back by a brightly-colored mural that might look familiar to some Baltimore residents.
Baltimore Murals Added to Google Earth Collection
Over the past three years, Baltimore’s Open Walls project has livened up the city with murals painted on the sides (and fronts!) of city buildings.
Local Street Artist Makes Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List
Chances are, if you live in Baltimore, you’ve seen Gaia’s work. That Egyptian headdress on Old York Road? That’s him. The black-and-white bird on North Avenue? Gaia again. That arabber mural? You guessed it.
Baltimore’s Best New Mural
Baltimore’s Open Walls project has brought muralists from as far as South Africa and Spain (though not very many women…) to decorate walls and facades all over Baltimore. One of my favorite so far is the brand new Love Letter Baltimore by Brooklyn painter Steve Powers.
Painting the City: Open Walls Baltimore (Photos and Essay)
Writer and UMBC visiting prof Deborah Rudacille looks back at Open Walls Baltimore and the complicated relationship between graffiti and street art.
One fine evening last spring, the street artist Gaia hunched over the handlebars of his bike watching two Ukrainian artists named Alexei and Vladimir spray a Chagall-like image on the side of a Maryland Avenue senior center.
The 23-year-old Maryland Institute College of Art graduate had spent the past five months putting together Open Walls, a month-long street art project. With help from Ben Stone of Station North Arts and Entertainment, he had secured a bit more than $60,000 dollars in grant funding from PNC bank and $20,000 from a $150,000 National Endowment for the Arts neighborhood grant to fund the project. He had arranged for permits, rented lifts and gotten the mayor to appear at the launch party. He was housing a revolving collection of artists in his cluttered loft and spent most days cycling between walls in Station North and Greenmount West, making sure that the artists had enough paint and wheatpaste, that the lifts were working properly and that relations between the artists and residents of the community were amicable. And he had put up the first mural himself, on the high-profile corner of North and Charles.
