Art on the Beltline

From WABE online, an article about the art on the Beltline, the site also has the audio version.  Below is the transcript.

Art on the Beltline

(2010-06-04)

ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - Spencer Murrill is busy painting graffiti with his black and white spray cans on the back loading dock of a Turner Studios warehouse.

Instead of the usual multicolored lettering that you'd see in most graffiti, Spencer is using the black and white paint to make a group of faces.

"The different characters that I chose to put in the piece are supposed to represent sort of, different cultural aspects of the city that we live in."

He's not doing anything illegal here because he is one of dozens of artists selected to create art projects along the Beltline.

"one of the things that I like about art in spaces like this is that it's open, but you also sort of get rewarded for coming out here to see it"

Spencer in young, in his mid 20s and he first became interested in doing graffiti from all of the pieces he saw while riding Marta around the city

"That's one of the things that really interests me about graffiti art is that a lot of the best work is in places that you really have to kind of work to get to"

And that's the whole point of the Art on the Beltline project. They want to encourage people to become explorers

"if people are really going to embrace the Beltline as the new public ground, they gotta get on it, and it's no use waiting until it's all done; they've gotta get on it now."

That's Fred Yalouris. He's Director of Design for the Beltline and is in charge of this arts project. The 2.8 billion dollar project is still in its early phases. The path itself is mostly covered in grass and gravel. The next step will be to install hiking and biking trails along its 22 mile corridor. Again, Fred Yalouris

"if you look at the Beltline project, it is so big, so vast, has so many facets, so many components, that if you're a transit advocate, you think of it as a transit project. If you're a bicyclist, you think of it as a trails project. Some people think of it as a housing project; what it is, is all of those things"

To attract people they had the idea for this art project. Beltline officials issued a call for submissions and ended up receiving 177 which was way more than they had expected. After selecting 42, the artists then had the month of May to pick a spot, then create and install their work. These works include; murals, sculptures, a gardening project. There is also a pair of bird house colonies sitting atop 2 twenty foot poles. They were installed by Alabama native Michi Meko.

"I hope that this piece stands for the metaphor of the wrong side of the tracks."

One colony is made of white plastic gourds, and the other is a collection of real gourds that have been painted all sorts of different colors. These were then placed on opposing sides of the old railroad tracks.

"so you have sort of a pre-fab side, which could be seen as a good neighborhood, and then you have this sort of graffiti, multi-color side, which could be seen as the other side of the tracks"

You can go find Michi's birdhouses, and Spencer's mural this Saturday, when Art on the Beltline opens to the public. Most of the art is temporary, just on display through October, but a few pieces will be selected to stay there longer.

For WABE news, I'm Aleck Ragsdale

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