Spruill Center students tour Atlanta street art

By AMBER PERRY amber@appenmedia.com

ATLANTA — Since moving to Virginia Highlands in 1981, Taylor Daly said she has watched the “march of gentrification” throughout Atlanta.

“This city was built on a really strong African American economy,” Daly said, “and we have not honored it.”

Daly had just finished the introductory class on street art at the Spruill Center for the Arts, part of a six-week curriculum developed by Brave Nu Ventures. In it, Leigh Elion, an academic who examines street art in the context of urban development, lectured about the rhetoric of the medium as a response to gentrification in Atlanta’s historically Black communities.

“Street art is so important because it's still people's voices,” Daly said. “It's people's voices, and I want to be able to listen to it.”

Daly, alongside her sister and longtime friend, are among about a dozen of the course’s students. “Exploring Street Art in Atlanta” was designed over a year, with the help of local artists and scholars. Rachel Griner, founder of Brave Nu Ventures, says it’s one of only a handful out there.

“If we looked at street art with that same kind of lens of educational validity, intellectual validity, creative validity, we would have courses,” Griner said.

Griner, who lived in Atlanta 20 years ago and has recently returned, noticed how street art had grown to be a defining part of Atlanta.

“It really hit me how much of a cultural asset it is,” Griner said. “It's everywhere.”

Griner is expected to lead one class about the merits of street art. Other instructors will be Malcom Turpin, who teaches graffiti, and Aysha Pennerman, a muralist. The course will culminate in a student-produced chalk mural on one of the Spruill Center’s walls, using insights and techniques provided by Pennerman.

As one student pointed out — the class had exclusively White women, late to middle-aged. Before the class, students shared why they decided to sign up for a course on street art.

Answers varied — whether it be the love for its aesthetic or the story, which is often political. Some also shared how they’re “illiterate” in street art and simply wanted to know more about a medium that permeates the City of Atlanta.

“One thing that I love about it is the message comes from the people and not from the media,” said one student who had been a fan of street art for 20 years.

Street art rhetoric

Elion, director of Emory’s Writing Center, described the uniqueness of street art in how it is an active, transformative process that tells viewers something about what artists, or communities want the city to look like and how they want people to relate with one another.

“Street art, to me, offers us a powerful tool for understanding how other people want to be able to exist and live their lives in a city,” Elion said. “It’s a really powerful tool for understanding the experiences of other people, even those who might be different from us.”

Elion said Atlanta’s street art tends to deepen ties to community roots, revise narratives about belonging to include the marginalized as well as model an ethics of community engagement.

One of Elion’s objectives with her presentation was to provide students a set of questions they could use to approach or interpret street art, despite abstract qualities or personal unfamiliarity.

When viewing street art, Elion recommended that students ask themselves questions about elements of the mural, what they notice, where the mural is located — how a neighborhood might explain what is seen, and vice versa.

She also recommended students look at themselves when they look at street art.

“We might not always like an artist’s stylistic choices. We might not always get a reference. We might not agree if something is overtly political,” Elion said. “We might not agree with it. We might not understand it.”

But Elion said the art might prompt students to take up its argument and to take action like meeting their neighbors, advocating for historical preservation or affordable housing, challenging racial and gender stereotypes, or by learning about the histories important to other people.

“Street art really invites us to look at the city, so that we might, with our communities, develop a shared vision for the future,” Elion said.

To the streets

The following week, students took Elion’s instruction to the streets of the Castleberry Hills and South Downtown in Atlanta April 22, under the guidance of Claudia Hart, founder of ATL Street Art Tours.

Calling the tour an “open air gallery,” Hart used a Maya Angelou quote to define its premise: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” She said her objective was to create a shared experience with a diverse group of people.

Starting on Peters Street, Hart highlighted around 10 murals across a 2-mile walk, describing their history and connection to the neighborhood as well as through her own perspective. Most of the murals offered social commentary, which Hart and

Griner would ask the students about.

Some murals on the tour had been around for years, like Faatimah Stevens’ on Peters Street which has “Hey Brown Girl You’re Beautiful” in bold, black letters and an outline of a Black woman wearing a cultural headdress.

Hart said street artists in Atlanta are good at preserving murals, whereas artists in other cities might be less respectful. But walls easily become a free-for-all, she said, once someone breaks into frame with their own tag.

One mural sparked Hart to recall a conversation she had with her mother.

“She’ll say, ‘Kids are so resilient,’” Hart said. “And I'm like, ‘Please stop saying that. I understand that may be the case, but kids shouldn’t have to be resilient.”

Painted by New Orleans-based Brandan Odums, Walker Street featured a black-and-white image of a Black child with his arms raised and fists clenched. The child, genderless, appeared as though they hadn't slept. Their eyes had a haunted look. Ribs were pronounced.

But the backdrop was bright yellow, and flowers burst forth from behind the child’s head. The words, “God is Love” were painted to the far right. Hart said the contrast could represent the need to protect innocence.