Check out this great video from Faythe Levine and Samuel Macon about Steve Power's project A Love Letter to Syracuse. It's awesome to hear and see a community coming together around art. PMA!
Want to see more of this project in action? I know you do! See Faythe's Out & About post from a few weeks ago where she shares pics of her visit with Steve and crew as they paint. Also as a side note, the pics make great wallpaper for your computer. ;)
Love Letter to Syracuse from Maarten Jacobs on Vimeo.
I've been pretty gaga over Steve Powers for a long time, his work is dynamic on so many levels. But he upped the anté when he started his public mural project; A Love Letter For You in Philadelphia in 2009. Taking a time honored skill, like sign painting and breathing a different life into it is fascinating and inspiring. Especially on such a public level.
In today's post, good friend of the blog, Faythe Levine shares with us her visit with Steve Powers and crew as they paint a bridge in New York for his latest mural project; A Love Letter To Syracuse. This visit is the latest in Faythe's and her crew's documentation of sign painters all over the country for their up coming film Sign Painter Documentary. A big thanks to Faythe for sharing her visit with us! - meighan
Myself, Sam Macon (co-director) and Travis Aculair (director of photography) spent 4 days in Syracuse last week with Steve Powers and his crew while they worked on the massive project in the downtown area. Steve & I had only briefly corresponded via email so when we arrived to the location it was exciting to see him and his crew in action. They had already started work on three doubled sided train trestles that needed to be buffed, primed and then lettered. They operated with 4 lifts and a rotating crew of about 10 east-coast based painters.
Aside from operating as a large crew working on a busy street, the part of the project I was really impressed about was the community outreach that they did weeks before picking the language that was to be painted. They actually went door to door, stopped folks on the street and held community meetings to ask people who live in the Near Westside neighborhood what it is they love or dislike about living in Syracuse. From the information they collected, Powers formulated the final wording for the trestles that will become a permanent fixture within the landscape and destination point for the city of Syracuse.
I was also amazed from a coordinating perspective, considering the trestles span a major thoroughfare in the city. In order for the streets to be blocked the amount of permits involved along with permission from the train company that owns the actual trestles seemed wild. But the driving forces behind the project COLAB (affiliated with Syracuse University) and the Near Westside Initiative made it happen.
After spending four days in the area talking to passerby's while we were shooting, I got a feel for the neighborhood. Almost everyone stopped to talk, interested in what was going on. For Sam & I, this was a fantastic opportunity to see a form of contemporary sign painting shaping the way a urban space will look for years to come. I look forward to revisiting the area and seeing how this project may encourage other cities to consider positive messages to take over dead space.
These photographs make so happy! Caleb Neelon's Signs and Symbols mural project for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston closes on September 6th. Here are some awesome pics of the little artists at their opening. Totally warm fuzzie inducing! See more on Caleb's blog. All photos courtesy of Nick Ryan.
Here is the original post when Caleb started the project.
Caleb Neelon just got back from China and shared with me a few pics of the mural he worked on for eight very, hot days. Normally a mural like this takes about 4-5 days, but because it was so hot Caleb was unable to actually even paint between the hrs of 9am and 4:30pm. (Kinda jealous of that heat right now here in chilly SF). He also passes along some images of the neighborhood and the paintings he mentions below:
"I just got back from China, from Shenzhen, right next to Hong Kong. It was the hottest place I've ever done a mural... brutal. The Dafen Art Museum, where we did the project, is in the middle of the neighborhood where a very large percentage of the world's replica oil paintings are made. Unique neighborhood for sure.
The mural was for (and on) the Dafen Art Museum. It's a project for the Shenzhen pavilion of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Urbanus, the architecture firm that designed the museum."
Caleb, practically naked, due to the heat. Heathen!
A mural by Alexandros Vasmoulakis. LOVE it.
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