Painting the town: 50 new murals will brighten Erie neighborhoods and create seasonal jobs
Erie artist Antonio Howard has a vision for a mural he will paint for Erie Arts & Culture this summer.
The mural will be one of 50 that the regional arts agency plans to commission in Erie by the end of 2023. The first 10 murals will be painted this summer along safe walking routes to the city's community schools.
The theme of Howard's mural will likely be a generational conversation, he said, partly inspired by the first mural he painted, on the wall of a prison visitors' room. Howard served almost 26 years in prison for his involvement at age 15 in the 1991 robbery and murder of an Erie man. He taught himself visual art from books that he read in prison.
"Someone came to me and asked me to paint a mural in the prison visiting room so kids didn't have to look at a blank wall," Howard said.
His mural featured the Minions, then-popular from the children's film "Despicable Me."
"I saw kids introduce their fathers to the Minions on the wall. There was interaction. There was conversation," Howard said. "It had kind of unexpected effects that created an addiction in me for murals."
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The mural proved the transformational power of art, Howard said.
"I had asked for a picture of the wall as a reference point before the mural was painted, but was refused. It would have shown the placement of all of the security cameras," Howard said. "After I painted the mural, I asked for a picture of it and they had no problem giving it to me. To me, it felt like the focus of the room then was the mural and the energy it brought."
Howard and Erie artist Caesar Westbrook painted the mural honoring Erie veteran and businessman Luther Manus at Manus Sunoco on East 12th Street in 2020. Howard last year teamed with Florida-based artist Mwanel Pierre-Louis and Erie's Brian Bonner to create the mural on the former Wayne School honoring the late Carla Hughes, a popular Erie School District dance teacher, Erie Playhouse performer and Wayne School alumnus.
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The murals give viewers ownership of the art and of their communities, said Howard, who encourages community participation as he paints.
"For everybody who stops to see the color and process, I see an opportunity for them to pick up a brush, shed their cool and caste, and connect with each other," Howard said. "Whether they're experienced or uncomfortable with it, they kind of go on auto-pilot and paint, and the next thing you know, they're talking to the person next to them that maybe they wouldn't talk to walking down the street.
"Later on, you see them claiming the mural as theirs," Howard said.
The works in progress teach the value of working together, Howard said.
"They create opportunities for community health in a meaningful, non-competitive process that I think is long overdue, judging by where we're at today," he said. "We come together otherwise around things like sports, but on opposing teams, and we reflect that same paradigm outside that arena. We rarely have things that inspire cooperative efforts."
The 50 murals project
The new artworks will join more than 70 already in place, according to VisitErie, in the city's growing outdoor gallery.
The larger-than-life paintings — on buildings, stairways, railroad bridges and more — celebrate Erie history, industry, neighborhoods, immigrants, ethnicity and arts.
Other murals honor local heroes and personalities who we might not cast in bronze, including Methodist Towers resident Rudy Daniels and World War II veteran and businessman John Orlando.
More: Meet Rudy Daniels, the man behind the 8-story mural
"They're an outdoor museum of visual art," said Patrick Fisher, executive director of Erie Arts & Culture.
The murals are seen by hundreds and thousands of people every day, including many with no other access to art.
"Some of the most impactful art is the art that is most accessible to the broad community, people who in many cases are prevented from accessing art beyond the public realm," Fisher said, due to lack of transportation, admission fees and other factors. "Public art eliminates the barriers that keep people from engaging with art."
The Erie Arts & Culture initiative will provide at least 10 new public artworks this year. The regional arts organization will use discretionary funds, Erie Insurance contributions and a $150,000 American Rescue Plan grant from the City of Erie to fund the first 10 murals. It's raising additional money to cover expenses for the next 40 murals. Total cost is estimated at $1 million.
"If we have more funding this summer, we will likely expand our efforts and commission more murals this year," Fisher said. "If we don't expand the project this year, we will do 40 murals next summer, maybe in a mural festival, one after another, with some done simultaneously."
A similar initiative that created 200 murals in two years in Flint, Michigan, was an inspiration for the Erie project. Fisher visited the murals last fall during a conference on placemaking, or strengthening the bonds between places and the people who live in them.
"They really did a great job defining neighborhoods and bridging the downtown with adjacent neighborhoods," Fisher said.
The first new Erie murals this year will be painted along safe walking routes to McKinley, Edison and Pfeiffer-Burleigh elementary schools and East and Strong Vincent middle schools. The routes were determined in a Safe Routes to School program launched by the United Way of Erie County, Erie School District and others in 2020.
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There will be two murals in each of the five neighborhoods. The first will be painted on a large retaining wall on Weschler Avenue between West 11th and West 12th streets beginning later this month.
"The idea is to create a visual experience for youth in our community," Fisher said.
Providing jobs and business
The murals project additionally will provide jobs for artists and summer jobs for teens.
"We want to provide a sustainable wage for artists who too often are expected to work below market value, to work just for exposure, to volunteer and even to provide their own materials," Fisher said.
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Each lead artist will be paid about $6,000 to design and paint the mural. Pay will vary depending on the artist's experience and project size.
Erie-based artists will be hired as project assistants and paid $25 hourly.
"People who may be interested in murals but have had no opportunity to do one will be able to expand their skills to design and execute a project and to learn directly through doing," Fisher said.
Working with Florida-based lead artist Pierre-Louis on the Wayne School project was an education in more than art, Howard said.
"I learned a lot, and not just about technique, but about things like contracts and how to interact with people who may not be as receptive as you'd like to the imagery you put on that wall," Howard said. "I learned what I can do to change things, what elements I might include to honor everybody without ostracizing one or two."
Howard also learned a more personal lesson.
"I learned to face my fear of heights working on a scissor lift swaying in the wind," Howard said.
Young adults ages 16 and up will be hired to assist with the mural projects, to learn about art and more besides.
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"They will definitely learn the soft skills, like managing their time and writing a resume, as well as how to manage their money, careers in art, marketing and entrepreneurship," said Tywonn Taylor, director of Career & Dreams, an Erie nonprofit founded in 2020 to help under-served and at-risk youths find work and alternative educational opportunities to help reduce gun violence.
Career & Dreams also serves minorities, families and the disabled and is working with Erie Arts & Culture on the murals project.
"We believe in one town, one team," Taylor said. "It takes a village to raise our kids. It also takes a village to be as strong as we can be."
Supplies for each mural will be purchased locally.
Mural locations and themes
The location for the first mural, on the retaining wall near Strong Vincent Middle School, was chosen in partnership with the school and Our West Bayfront. Erie Arts & Culture is working with neighborhood groups and talking with property owners to select additional sites.
Once each site is chosen, there will be neighborhood meetings for residents to share ideas on what the mural might depict. The first community meeting was held Saturday with Strong Vincent area residents.
"We expect quite a few rounds of conversation and a lot of interaction with the community. We want to make sure what's happening is happening with the community and not happening to the community," Fisher said.
That doesn't mean that community members will be asked exactly what they want to see in the mural.
"We'd have many suggestions and would not be able to please everyone," Fisher said.
Instead, residents will be asked what words they would use to describe their community; what shapes and colors they think of when they think of their community; if they had a spirit animal for their community, what it would be; if there's to be a portrait in the mural, who that person should be; and other questions.
The answers, Fisher said, will help artists shape their designs.
The artists
Lead artists selected for the first 10 murals are from around the country and around the world. Erie Arts & Culture reached out to artists who have participated in its visiting artist program, to mural artists nationwide, and to other arts organizations for recommendations.
"It's an important form of cross-pollination and relationship building between Erie and the larger art community," Fisher said. "We want experienced mural artists who are willing to take on assistants, work with youth and engage with the community."
Diversity also was emphasized in the search, Fisher said.
"We wanted to prioritize female, LGBTQ, transgender and non-gender identifying artists for an inclusive approach. Public art can be a male-dominated industry," Fisher said.
The lead artist for the first mural, on the Weschler Avenue retaining wall, will be Nicole Salgar. The Miami, Florida-based artist is expected to begin work on June 26 and to finish July 12.
Erie's Antonio Howard will be the lead artist July 25 through Aug. 8 for a mural at a site yet to be chosen.
Other lead artists this year are: Ana Balcazar, of Peru, July 6-14; Emily Ding, of Los Angeles, July, date to be determined; and Alex Ann Allen, of South Bend, Indiana, Sept. 4-17.
Contact Valerie Myers at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ETNmyers.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: 50 new murals will add to Erie's outdoor public art gallery
