On Sept. 12, the Main Street Ann Arbor Organization is hosting a Street Art Encounter. The downtown area will be closed to traffic and a wide variety of regional and local artists from Michigan will be creating work on walls and sidewalks throughout the day.
This free event will begin at noon and conclude at 8pm. There will be opportunities to watch creatives making work in real time as well as participate in interactive art installations.
The impact of street art
Urban art is a fast-growing movement currently taking the world by storm. By moving creative expression out of the formal gallery space and placing it directly onto the streets, it gives people the opportunity to come into contact with a variety of different perspectives and worldviews.
Whether it is through an intricate chalk drawing in a park, or a mural in a city space, this type of artistic expression allows the public at large to interact with an artist’s ideas in a much more personal way.
When you see painted renderings in a secluded museum space, they can sometimes become more impersonal and forgotten once you leave and go back to your everyday life and routines. But, when these same images surround you on the streets, when you’re on your way to work, or to meet a friend for dinner, their power can have a more immediate effect, allowing you to see yourself and your surroundings in a new, fresh way.
Urban art is much more than graffiti shrouded in darkness in secluded alleyways. It encompasses a wide range of artistic mediums, such as paint, chalk and watercolor. It can also take the form of interactive installations and performances, where the audience participates in the act of creation. It is highly fluid and malleable meeting the needs of the community it lives in. But it can also be temporary, washing away with the start of a thunderstorm or snowfall.
Participating artists
The Main Street Organization will be joining forces with John Vasquez a muralist from Saginaw, who helped to paint several large-scale murals alongside famed Spanish sculptor and painter Okuda San Miguel. This particular project transformed several massive empty grain silos that dotted the shores of the Saginaw River into a canvas for bright, fantastical color-saturated murals. This endeavor became a testament to the transformative power of art in revitalizing spaces that have long since been condemned or forgotten.
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For the Ann Arbor event, Vazquez will create an overall broad theme for the Street Art encounter in Ann Arbor and lead a group of visual creators in facilitating the transformation of the downtown streets into a colorful visual wonderland for the public to enjoy and wander through.
Freddy Diaz, a muralist from Detroit who began working professionally after graduating from high school, will be at the event. His work can be seen in the city’s Eastern Market as well as alongside the walls outside many local businesses, including restaurants. Another artist is Congo, originally from Peru, a graffiti artist who paints large scale portraits and landscapes both in Peru and Bay City, Michigan.
Kevin Burdick, from Fenton, will be in attendance. He attended Mott Community College before graduating with an animation and illustration degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.He works with airbrushing and aerosols to create his images, although according to his website he now uses aerosols exclusively to paint.
Charlie Boike, a former graffiti artist turned attorney, whose work can be seen throughout the city of Flint will be another painter at the event. His work focuses on large scale paintings that help to revitalize and refresh economically depressed urban landscapes. His intricate layered portraits of famous figures such as Einstein and JFK combine a fusion of the figurative and abstract to create a whole new interpretation of historic figures.
