Syracuse Murals
http://lovelettertosyracuse.com/
I recently stumbled across this site about an artist named Stephen Powers who combines his own flair with his love for signs and grafitti to make large murals. This site describes his recent project in Syracuse. In the first video on the site, the artist discusses his intentions to try to bridge the two neighborhoods that have been isolated from each other for years by train overpasses that no longer provide as significant of a use as they did when Syracuse was shipping an abundance of manufactured goods out of the city. The artist builds off the historical assets of the space as a way of redefining it. He incorporated the community and their sentiments toward their home in designing his artwork. The artist says, "these painted bridges represent what I believe is the future of Syracuse; Taking what has value and remaking it for the future, in a way that respects tradition and innovation."
We have discussed the way that roads, highways, industry, and other types of land use can fracture and isolate neighborhoods (and are sometimes intentionally prescribed by governments to do so). Stephen Powers, however, sees these bridges as a place to bring a community together over shared values and shared love for their city. Additionally, he finds a way to honor the historical significance of his canvas (the overpasses), while updating it so that it fits the needs of the current population. In class we have discussed ideas of preservation and founding, sense of place, authenticity and connections to place, and ownership over place, all of which Powers draws into his artwork in Syracuse by involving the community's connection to their home.
Does artwork like this this seem like a practical and reasonable solution to bridging socially, culturally, and economically isolated neighborhoods? And could this be done other places? Is it enough to encourage interactions between a diverse group of people, or would city theorists like Jane Jacobs say this approach is not holistic enough to encourage diverse street life?
Izzy - Thanks for sharing this, it's really beautiful and thought-provoking. The artist clearly took measures to elicit the local community's values and sentiments about their place rather than just appropriating ownership of the place's identity by putting up his own ideas. That said, I'm not quite sure what this art will "solve" apart from lessening the appearance of blight. The community brainstorming sessions showed in the film indicated current satisfaction with their neighborhoods despite the divisive presence of the train. This may have been the result of some of the outreach and accessibility of the community sessions, but it also implies that an art project like this might be more challenging or divisive in a place where residents are highly dissatisfied or have competing visions for the future of their place.
In response, I'm not sure the murals are meant to solve anything. For me, the murals are really meant to encourage residents to take pride in their community. Moreover, residents confrotned with the mural are perhaps more likely to take into account the fact that there is a team of people interested in the vitality of the community. If nothing else, the piece will can be a galvanizing agent ffor a community that perhaps has little in common besides the squalor around them. Sometimes all it takes is a change of conversation to produce change. I may be biased, however, because I think that street art is a really inspiring thing in a city. A number of the most famous artists in the world currently (Banski and Shepard Fairey) are known to produce secretive street works all throughout the world in various cities. The pieces, like the one in Syracuse, serve to galvanize a city through appreciation of the pieces. I encourage Syracuse to continue a move toward public artistic expressiona round the city.
I agree with Will. This reminds me of the great graffiti that used to be all over the walls of the now-pristine Sadove Student Center basement. That graffiti did nothing to hide the sad state of disarray that the basement was in at the time. What it did do was provide a topic of conversation for Hogwarts at Hamilton wizards and partygoers alike. In this sense it brought the community together and allowed them to have fun in basement conditions that were most likely not even close to modern building code. Now that the graffiti is gone, the basement feels sterile, and though it is a nice place to dance, I must say I felt closer to the basement as a place when it had the graffiti.
