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The Circuit Arcade Bar’s Mural Whitewashed Days After Going Up

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Wednesday in Scott’s Addition, a new mural commissioned by The Circuit Arcade Bar on the side of a neighboring building was whitewashed overnight. The mural was a massive explosion of 80s and 90s art and iconography, from C3PO playing a vintage game to the female robot from Terminator 3, and most notably, a grinning image of a young Will Smith reprising his infamous role as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Photo Credit: @thenightowl

The mural, painted by local artist Mickael Broth, was completed Sunday and painted over by Wednesday, sparking outrage on various social media platforms, including one colorful Reddit thread. The Circuit marketing manager Justin Cole said he was not expecting such an explosive reaction from the community. Though theories and conspiracies ran rampant, the full story remained largely unclear.

Photo Credit: @thenightowl

Cole said he woke up to a call from his mom telling him that the mural was on the news. He was barraged by Facebook messages from friends he hadn’t heard from in years asking what had happened, “Everyone’s coming out of the woodwork to ask me what’s going on,” he said.  

Photo Credit: Sarah Honosky

According to Cole and The Circuit owner Robert (who asked that we leave out his last name), The Circuit was given permission to commission a mural on a wall adjacent to their vintage arcade and bar at 3105 W.Leigh St. by the building’s landlord in October.

“It wasn’t until he {Broth} was basically 75 percent done, that someone–we didn’t know who at this point in the story because we weren’t there, but walked up to the artist and said, ‘what are you doing?’ and he said ‘I’m painting this wall,’ and they said ‘you don’t have permission to do this’,” said Cole.

Photo Credit: @thenightowl

That’s when The Circuit owner began to get texts and complaints from the tenant of the building. “After it gets painted he sends a text saying ‘[the mural] is hideous, I’m going to cover this up, this is ridiculous’,” said the owner. “Supposedly, he wants to put cohesive artwork around the whole building. I wish he would have told me this before I got approval, and before I spent thousands of dollars.”

The tenant in 3103 who had complaints about The Circuit’s mural is Richmond restaurateur Brandon Pearson, co-owner of Sabai and Aloi, a Thai food truck. Aloi was often parked in the same lot as the building, which houses Pearson’s furniture company, Pearson Furnishings according to a Richmond BizSense article. 

Photo Credit: Sarah Honosky

“I disagree with the decision,” said Cole. “But I don’t dislike the individual because of the decision they made.”

In what seemed to be a miscommunication, Pearson later said he had also obtained permission from the landlord to paint a mural on the wall. “I don’t know what that conversation was, but somewhere in that conversation the landlord did, I guess, end up promising the same thing he promised us,” said Cole.

The Circuit owner said he tried to contact the landlord of the building housing both 3103 and 3105 W Leigh St., which WTVR reports has been occupied by Pearson for 4 years, to clear up the confusion. He said he offered to pay rent per month for the wall and the mural. “He never got back to me, and all of sudden, overnight, somebody paints the wall over,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to get my attorney involved yet.”

Cole said that the mural had the potential to become a staple of the neighborhood. The community is noticeably frustrated by the unauthorized removal of the artwork, many of the service staff at The Circuit among them.

Photo Credit: @thenightowl

“Richmond is very proud of their art and their artists,” said Cole. “Everyone around here, especially, really likes to cherish the artists and keep Richmond on the map as a centralized art enthusiast type of city. I think that’s why people are a little upset about it…Also for a mural to go up and then come right back down, there’s some suspicion when you see that happen when you’re an outside person.”

Broth said he was not notified when the mural would be painted over, but declined to get involved.  “All I know for sure is that I was commissioned by The Circuit to paint the mural. I did my job and was paid on schedule. A few days after the mural was finished, someone painted the wall white,” said Broth.

Though according to one Instagram post, Broth caught word of the intention to remove the mural before it happened, and after the fact he took the development in stride. “Well, that didn’t last long.”

In a brief Facebook post memorializing the mural, The Circuit said “Welp, it was fun while it lasted…” followed by a video documenting the transformation from a building-length mural to a whitewashed wall.  

Efforts to reach Aloi for comment were unsuccessful.

This story has been updated to reflect additional reporting which determined that Pearson is the tenant of the building which was painted on; we missed that he had a lease to the space in our original report.

Photos By: @thenightowl and Sarah Honosky

RVA #30: Always Falling On The Sharpest Sword, An Interview with Street Artist Nils Westergard

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If I die in my studio
Like a mouse in my cage
Will the neighbors smell my corpse
Before the rats eat my face
(go outside)

The writing on the wall of Nils Westergard’s Museum District studio, while somewhat morbid, pokes fun at the compulsive working tendencies that have resulted in his expansive, cohesive body of work, despite the ingenious artist being only three years out of school.

Originally printed in RVA #30 FALL 2017, you can check out the issue HERE or pick it up around Richmond now. 

Since graduating from VCU with a film degree in 2014, the Belgian-American Richmonder has amassed a prolific portfolio of around 60 murals in both the United States and Europe, and has also exhibited his paintings and smaller hand-cut stencil works in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic. RVA Magazine has followed his career since he appeared on the scene in 2015 as the first local artist (and one of the youngest artists) to participate in the Richmond Mural project. Most notable here in town for his introspective, usually monochrome mural-scale portraiture, his hand-cut city map works were also picked up by popular press in Amsterdam and London, as well as the front page of Reddit on a few occasions.

While preparing for the upcoming Richmond Street Art Festival, Nils, alongside his feathered friend Paco, answered a few of our questions, giving us some rare insight into the artist’s captivating & conscientious work.

What has been your experience as a working artist in Richmond?

Taking forever to get a wall here. For every 30 walls I hit up, maybe one goes through, so I’m always bitching about trying to get a wall. In some ways I wish it was easier to do, but as a result I’ve ended up painting overseas so much. I would like to exhibit in Richmond. I sometimes feel like I don’t get a lot of love from Richmond, and more so, I don’t think people realize I’m from here. People will ask when I’m in town, or, “Hey dude when do you go back home?” and I’m like, “I’m from here! I’ve lived here seven years! I’m from Richmond!” I like to be from Richmond, but people think I’m just here for the mural project or other events, when I’m really here full time.

I was walking by one of the local galleries getting some coffee, and I notice their show up called “RVA Street Art,” and my reaction was a little “WTF?” I walked in and it was Ed Trask, Mickael Broth, Matt Lively, and, I mean, those guys are great and I really love what they’re doing, but how did I not even hear about this? How did I not hear this was going on when I have three murals outside of their back door? How am I so disconnected from the Richmond “Street Art Community” that I didn’t even know the show was on? That kind of shit gets me. I’d love to do more in Richmond, but instead I end up showing everything in Scandinavia, London, Amsterdam, and such. I’m proud to be from here. I’d like to do stuff here. I don’t know if the community is a little older than me, or my stuff is a little darker, or what. I think the biggest thing is that my stuff is not the most colorful or uplifting, cardinals and shit. Maybe not as easy to digest. And I get it. It just doesn’t fly, and I don’t want to bend for it.

You had a thoughtful response to Times-Dispatch writer Mark Holmberg’s rant that the Richmond Mural Project and others like it “send an ugly message.” Any further comments you’d like to share?

Get fuckin’ real, man! There are places I have been where I think, “This is too much.” Places like Wynwood [Walls, Miami] jump to mind, where everything is just covered. But we are so far from that here. You know, we could easily have two or three times more walls than we do now and I still don’t think it’d feel suffocated. Go to Philadelphia. They have one of the longest-running, most successful mural programs in the country, and it’s excellent. They’re proud of it. It’s all over the city. But it’s ridiculous that this would be considered too many [in Richmond]. There’s definitely a point where there’s too many, but we are very, very far from it. Plus, I see it as a way to combat ads. Driving down Broad [Street], I see maybe five murals and about 500 signs for fast food, or billboards.

What role has new media or social media had in your career thus far?

I was doing a bunch of graffiti in middle school, and started learning to make stencils around that time from a website out of Australia, a small forum called Stencil Revolution. I learned all the basics of what I do now from that. It was cool to be privy to this little group of people that were doing that. A lot of the artists that are larger now were definitely posting on there, and I guess in a sense that was an earlier form of social media. So now when I travel, I see and meet up with artists that I knew from the forum, like ELK when I was in Australia a couple years ago, who is a larger artist now. I had known him since I was 12 thanks to this website.

It’s hard to think about what it was like before social media. I was watching what was going down in Europe when I was in middle school, through tiny websites and blogs that were following it, and this was way before it blew the fuck up. And then once social media came along, it totally just blew work like this forward. Any kind of image sharing platform is naturally going to boost something like this forward. I actually really loathe smartphone culture. I’ve had this old phone for twelve years. I have no desire to have a smartphone. I do have one that I use as an iPod and to run my Instagram off of, so I recognize it as a necessary evil, because I do think 90% of the gigs I get are a result of people seeing my work online. I’ve also noticed this culture develop where artists are painting for the picture, and they’re like, “Am I done?” [Then] they take a picture on their phone and say, “That looks good enough.” It’s easy to fall into that because you know the majority of the audience that you care about probably are online, but the fact of the matter is by painting in a community you are changing a lot of people’s environments. They have to walk by this every day, so you really have to paint it with the knowledge that this is meant to be seen in person, not just on a two-inch screen.

What elements of your process would you say are shared between your more intricate, hand-cut stencil work and the larger murals?

I don’t think most people realize that I do the stencil work. I think most people know me for the walls because they are dramatic and big, and that’s what people see. I’ve only started doing the walls a couple years ago, and I’ve been doing the stencils for over a decade. When I think of myself, I consider myself more of a stencil guy over anything, because I’ve spent way more hours doing this than I’ll ever spend doing a wall. The walls go quick. I do a wall in like two days; even the large ones, I do in three days max. But the stencils take me forever, so I consider myself more about this. As for common process, I would use the exact same picture that I cut out of, break the image into layers, and draw the shades out. If I’m doing a wall, I’ll maybe sometimes project some outlines, but I more often just take that and go. If I’m doing the stencils, I just cut it out and break it down into cuts.

What drew you to doing the murals after all of this stencil work and a film degree?

I think it’s the graffiti mindset that I came up in as a kid — go big and go everywhere! And I just admire it. Big work like that has a large effect, and it’s a physical experience. But why did I originally get into it? I just saw work I liked, and I wanted to do it myself. The first year that the Richmond Mural Project came around, and brought these people that I’d followed online for a decade when they were just tiny people, I’d never really had a chance to see any of this stuff in person because it was overseas. So I was pretty excited to finally put faces to the work I had known. I skipped about a week of school and was just hanging out with them, and after spending some time with them, I realized that these were just normal people and watching them work made it feel less intimidating. So I ended up doing my first wall, and just kept going.

I also feel like the murals allow me to bypass any “velvet rope” mentality that galleries might create, where people who feel like, “Oh I’m not a gallery person, I don’t go to art shows,” wouldn’t get to see the work. A lot of people have never been to a gallery show. It’s just not a world that they’re a part of, and I get that. Also, considering how people might view the art world as an elitist place, I feel like you avoid a lot of that when you paint on the street. People can pass it and enjoy it in their own right and there’s no pretense to it.

You have a few distinct projects you’ve been working — the murals, these hand-cut stencil figure paintings, and also hand-cut layouts of city maps. How do you move from one project to the next?

I’m in a constant nebulous free-flow with the things I want to make. I’ve always gone by this: If you put yourself in a sink or swim situation, you’re going to swim. So if you’re going to come up with an idea, just jump into it all the way. For Wallflower [his senior thesis film], I just had to cut out a bird silhouette one night, and all because of a 15 second thought, I decided to dedicate the next year of my life to this project. Eight hours a day, every day. Go all the way in on it and see how it goes. That’s how it happened with the maps I’ve done too. I could think about why I’m doing it, or I could just do it. So I started doing the maps, and I’ve been doing this floral stuff recently. I’m not sure why I’m doing it, but I have a lot of time to figure out why while I am. I really just get an idea, feel good about it for six seconds, and then jump in.

For someone who has only been out of school for three years, your professional resume is quite impressive already. What advice would you have for college students and recent graduates?

Effort. Hours. I think 98% of people in art school are pretty lazy, and I know that’s hard to hear because you work really hard to bust out your school work. But then what? You make your A in painting, and no one really gives a shit. You have to make your own work on the side. If you’re trying to make a living off of your art, that’s crazy. You’re trying to tell the universe that you deserve to live off of painting pictures. There’s a degree of ego that’s insane, to think you deserve to pull that off, so you have to put in an ungodly amount of effort as payment. Just be careful not to lose your mind in the process.

nilswestergard.com 

Studio and main photos by Patrick Biedrycki 


Art Sponsored by Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art 

 

 

Empower Through Art: Girls For A Change & Hamilton Glass Collab on Jackson Ward Mural

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A new mural can be found on the corner of East Broad and North 1st streets, one that explicitly celebrates black girls, and demands that they be treated with the respect they deserve.

The initial idea for the mural came from Girls For A Change, a Virginia-based organization whose mission is to empower and support girls of color to enact social change and to work for a brighter future for black women.

“Across our nation, we continue to know that black girls, unfortunately, are not valued,” said Angela Patton, CEO of Girls For A Change. “These girls decided that they wanted the mural to represent narrative change about the presence of black women and girls.”

In November of 2016, Girls For A Change students from John Marshall High School spoke to the Office of Community Wealth Building about the prejudices that black girls face, as well as the economic realities that the girls have struggled with. The department’s director, Reggie Gordon, asked the girls about their ideas on how to deal with poverty in their communities.

“One of the ideas was a mural because they thought that the way people think about black women could actually change how they give black women an opportunity,” Patton said. “If I see her differently when she does apply for the job, or if she is working at a job and wants to have equal pay, or if she is asking for an opportunity to lead in a position, if they can see past her color, and see past her gender, then maybe that could break down a major barrier.”

Richmond muralist Hamilton Glass saw this meeting when it was broadcast on Facebook Live, and was inspired to reach out to the girls to forward the idea.

“In that speech, they were talking about a whole list of things that they would like to see for themselves in the future,” Glass said. “One percent of that speech said something about seeing things in their image that speaks to them. That was something I just felt like I could help with.”

Glass started working with the girls on the mural soon after.

“We met with the girls for 12 weeks, and the girls got into it, they loved the idea, and they designed their own mural,” Glass said. “I was explaining to the girls that this is something that is not meant to be just a pretty picture, but this is something that is meant to put your words, your thoughts, your image, your voice on the side of the building to represent you.”

Girls For A Change members, Glass, and 60 volunteers from Virginia Credit Union gathered together to paint a large portion of the mural on Sat., Oct. 14.

Virginia Credit Union provided funding for the mural. The bank is also providing the Girls For A Change members with financial education, as well as mentoring girls who need assistance with their financing.

HandsOn Greater Richmond helped facilitate by closing off streets and procuring supplies. They were also tasked with coordinating communication between the various groups involved, in addition to managing the recruitment of the volunteers, according to Kathryn Lienard, corporate program assistant for HandsOn Greater Richmond.

While work on the mural was not completed on Saturday, Glass and VCU art student Austin Miles are set to complete the mural, located at 24 E. Broad St. by Tuesday, Oct. 24.

The girls hope that the mural will help change the way people think about black girls, Patton said.

“I’m not just preparing black girls for the world, I’m preparing the world for black girls,” Patton said. “I’m not only empowering them, I’m empowering you, too, to be with them, to get to know them, to understand them, and to collaborate with them.”

 

Art Sponsored by Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art 

 

Richmond artist depicts the ‘everyday woman’ with East Coast mural tour

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A blinking neon light hanging on a dingy building near South of the Border in South Carolina flashing the words “Girls, Girls, Girls!,” would conjure up some negative images for most women, but ended up being inspiration for Emily Herr’s latest project.

“It was so weird to see that, so sad, out in the middle of nowhere at South of the Border,” the RVA muralist said. “But if you don’t really have anything to do with that world, or if you don’t really think about it, and take it out of context, it’s so happy…and I just loved that.”

Since June, Herr, of Herr Suite, has been painting Richmond women all around the city in small scale murals on houses, businesses, and public spaces, in an effort to change media depictions of women as one-dimensional objects and one beauty standard.

Photo by @girlsgirlsgirlstour

Tomorrow, Herr, along with Sarah Apple of Lucky Signs RVA, will roll out in their multi-colored mobile art studio truck to embark on their “Girls! Girls! Girls!” tour to paint murals of as many real, everyday women as they can up the East Coast all the way to Burlington, Vermont.

“We have a partner who is going to let us paint the back of his thrift stop and the building next door and do the same sort of thing as the Sheppard and Broad Street one; take a bunch of images of local women and interweave it with the whole Girls! Girls! Girls! thing,” Herr said. “The goal is on the way up, we’ll be propositioning people on the way up to try to as much as we can.”

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Herr, a 2013 VCUarts graduate, has been painting murals for over nine years and done work for local businesses such as Sugar & Twine, Welcoming Walls, Gather on Broad, and Halcyon Vintage.

In January, she began the mission of her “Girls Girls Girls” motif with a mural of neon-colored women of all races, ages and shapes on Sheppard and Broad streets with the words “Girls Girls Girls” painted boldly across the wall. The artist’s goal is to steer away from the stereotypical depiction of a woman in a magazine, ad, or even fine art in some cases.

“There’s images of women everywhere all though advertising, that’s talked about a fair amount, ‘advertising fucks up body image’, but also art,” she said. “Fine art is very ‘oh the beauty of the female form’ and that’s an excuse for a piece of art and you don’t see that with male bodies. “

“You also don’t see that with all these other kinds of bodies, it’s not ‘oh the beauty of the female form’ if she’s 50 pounds overweight…so that’s bullshit and the art world definitely hides behind that.”

For her Sheppard and Broad mural, Herr put a call out on Facebook for pictures of everyday women that people love and want to see reflected just the way they are.

“That’s my goal is to show real actual women and everything that entails, you’re not perfectly groomed, you’re not necessarily happy, not necessarily sexy, and then also, better representation of people of different body types, different races and skin colors and also, ages and disabilities is what I would love to move this towards,” she said.

Coming from an illustration background, Herr said it was important for her, as well as other female artists, to reflect diversity in their work.

“There’s a huge push from female illustrators to make better representation of everybody in their work, like, be more conscious about who you’re drawing and when, and don’t just use your default body types and lifestyles,” she said.

With this tour, Herr has put out another call for pictures of women pushing for more diversity.

“I want you to be honest, I want you to send me a picture of somebody you know and you think is a cool person,” Herr said.

Ahead of her tour, she’s painted murals at Studio Two Three, Bon Air non-profit Girls for a Change, Campire & Co., and Endeavor Studios’ “Wet Walls” show.

Photo by @girlsgirlsgirlstour

She’s hoping to make stops specifically in D.C., New York, and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and make “Girls! Girls! Girls! More of a long-term project.

“I’m hoping for this to be ongoing…like I guess I imagine the tour being perpetual,” she said. “I would hope to paint murals that make people appreciate the actual humans around them a little bit more, see them in a new way, that’s what I’m working towards.”

Girls! Girls! Girls! tour kicks off tomorrow, Sat. July 15 .To submit a picture of a girl, email emily@herrsuite.com or tag or direct message @herrsuite or @girlsgirlsgirlstour. 

The RVA Street Art Festival returns this fall to use The Diamond as its canvas

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Monday morning in a press conference held at The Diamond, John Baliles and Flying Squirrels Chief Executive Chuck Domino announced that the baseball stadium would be the new canvas for the upcoming 4th RVA Street Art Festival.

The festival, to be held in the fall, will feature painted murals, projection lighting, landscape art, stairwell art, and other forms of mixed mixed art and bring together dozens of local, national, and international artists according to the Flying Squirrels’ release.

A concert series, food and beer trucks and activities for children and adults in the parking lot around the stadium, and Street Art-influenced Flying Squirrels merchandise are also on the schedule for the festival.

“I have been coming to this site to watch baseball since I was 6 years old when it was Parker Field and I was here the day this stadium opened,” said Baliles, in a statement on the partnership. “It is an absolute thrill to now have the opportunity to bring some of the best artists and creative minds in Richmond and beyond to transform the Diamond into a unique, artistic jewel.”

Last year, the festival was held at the Southern Silos in Manchester and prior to the that, the mural project was held at the former GRTC bus depot on South Davis Avenue. In September, the property was sold to local developers DKJ Richmond to be turned into a mixed use property.

Proceeds from the festival will support Connor’s Heroes, an organization that gives support and companionship to children in cancer treatment and their families which Domino believes will be a great way to draw in attendees. 

“This will be an incredible opportunity for the Squirrels. It’s going to help bring new people to our ballpark and help grow our charities supporting renovating inner city baseball diamonds in underserved communities,” he said in the news release. 

Co-founder of the RVA Street Art Festival and local muralist Ed Trask, was equally excited to have the upcoming festival at The Diamond.

“This is one of the most unique canvas’ I have ever seen and the possibilities for creativity are endless. This takes the transformational power of public art to the next level,” he said in the release. 

The 4th Street Art Festival will be held Sept. 22-24 at The Diamond. Keep your eyes pealed on RVA Mag as details emerge about the forthcoming festival.

 

Art 180 teens collaborate with local artist on Black Hand Coffee mural

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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.
[Read more…] about Art 180 teens collaborate with local artist on Black Hand Coffee mural