It seems every time you drive down one of Richmond’s bustling streets, walk down an alley way, or visit a popular restaurant or gallery, a new mural catches your eye. And as they continue to grow in numbers and variety, the city more and more vibrant.
It seems every time you drive down one of Richmond’s bustling streets, walk down an alley way, or visit a popular restaurant or gallery, a new mural catches your eye. And as they continue to grow in numbers and variety, the city more and more vibrant.
A new mural was recently painted on the side of Black Hand Coffee, but it’s not world-renowned muralists who are behind the new work of art this time.
The local coffee shop at 3101 Patterson Ave., teamed up with Art 180’s Atlas Team program along with two local artists to create a piece that encompasses the community’s identity and sustainability while also representing different facets of our city.
Art 180 is a local community organization that provides opportunities for artistic expression to the youth community that are faced with challenging circumstances. The program has worked for 18 years to establish themselves in the community and give teenagers positive opportunities such as yoga and watercolor, poetry, and of course art.
The Atlas Teen program at Art 180 is a group of selected kids that are already involved in Art 180 and show potential leadership skills and maturity. This program takes on bigger and public projects such as the mural on the side of Black Hand.
The mural was created over the course of six days with the help of a group of 15 to 18-year-olds and was led by local artists Steve Hedberg and his creative assistant Latasha Dunston.
Hedberg has been a supporter of Art 180 over the years, and has donated paintings along the way to their gallery, but this is his first involvement with the Atlas program and first exterior mural.
“The biggest challenge was working with the kids, because you become the teacher,” said Hedberg. “So finding a way to create one idea from all of these different minds was really part of the challenge but also the most memorable.”
Michael Zetlan, program manager for Atlas Teen Program describes their public projects as a chance occurrence. While Art 180 was already in collaboration with Black Hand Coffee with their coffee bag series that features Steve Hedberg, the idea of painting a mural came through casual conversation.
“Clay Gilbert [owner of Black Hand] was hoping for something that tied coffee, the Richmond community, and the process of those two together with this mural,” said Hedberg.
The mural features the kids’ version and interpretation of Richmond. It Includes a bike and a mustache giving Richmond the hipster vibe, a guitar representing the music scene, and even the Richmond skyline.
“For them, they were talking about their community and then they actually got to contribute to their community,” said Zetlan.
The importance of Art 180 and a creative community goes without question, given that Virginia’s juvenile arrest rate for violent crime in 2012 was 76 per 100,000 population aged 10-17 according to Virginia Performs.
“I don’t think there could be a bigger value placed on creative expression,” said Zetlan. “We’re seeing kids get put away for years for a mistake they made at 15. I know myself, I made some dumb mistakes when I was 15.”
Getting kids out of the school-to-prison pipeline and putting them in a space where they can express their feelings is part of Art 180’s mission statement.
“Some of these kids are expressing real pain and real trauma and the unfairness and injustice they’re either seeing or experiencing in their life,” said Zetlan. “I think it’s really important that comes out in an expressive form and not in a violent form. They might not realize that when they wrote that poem when they were 15-years-old, they didn’t act out.”
