A new public art festival is kicking off in Atlanta this month. The Off the Tracks Mural Festival enlivens public spaces around Atlanta by having local artists beautify our city’s neighborhoods. This year, they are focusing on the Kirkwood neighborhood, with live painting on Saturday, Oct. 22.
Off the Tracks co-founders Adam Stephenson and Carrie Padgett joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom, along with participating muralist Andrew Blooms, to talk about their work in the Atlanta art community and this year’s festival events.
Interview highlights:
Why a mural festival seemed a perfect way to democratize art:
“Well, we love them,” said Padgett. “They’re a whole lot of fun. It’s a great way to get a lot of artists networking with each other, volunteers coming out that want to support the arts but don’t know how. You know, the neighborhood gets really excited, because they’re like, ‘What are you making? How does this even happen?’ The whole process of creating a giant mural is kind of like magic.”
“Coming to Atlanta, I was exposed to graffiti, and this stuff absolutely blew my mind and sent my imagination reeling. I was just seeing forms that I’d never seen before, colors I’d never seen before, compositions I’d never seen before,” said Stephenson. “Over time, I started to realize the influence that this stuff had on me, that I wouldn’t have had the access to otherwise… Coming to galleries just seemed a little bit inaccessible… I was of the mind that you had to be rich, have money. And it was a bit ignorant, but there’s a lot of people that are ignorant about the arts, and I think that public-facing arts made for everyone demystifies art. It brings it to a level everyone can understand, and everyone can have the impact and feel how it changes you.”
The scope and layout of Off the Tracks’ new painting projects:
“If you Google ‘Kirkwood’ on a map and zoom in a little bit, you’ve got, on Hosea L. Williams Drive, between Kirkwood Rd. over where the library is, and then down through to Empire Arts Gallery, those are the two businesses that we’ll be between there. We’re definitely painting the Valero gas station. That’s really exciting. That’s the biggest wall we got,” said Padgett. “But if you come down that day and walkthrough, you’re going to see us painting all the way down to Soul Shine. That’s going to be really fun; that’s the daycare… There’s going to be restaurants that you can go visit and have a lovely cocktail that will help support us. But yeah, it’s just gonna be, walk through Kirkwood, grab a delicious meal, grab a delicious beverage from your favorite restaurant, and come hang out with the artists. We’ll be there all day.”
Artist Andrew Blooms on the visual style he’ll bring to live painting:
“My art is really inspired by Asian art, really specifically Japanese art, and I discovered this in college. I went to the University of Georgia – go Dogs – but I went to our library, and they had a book that was called ‘Tattoos of the Floating World,’ And this book tied Japanese woodblock printing… from the 16th century Edo period of Japan, and this is when the tattooing also really came to light as well. So that just hooked me right there. And since then, I remember even in college; I would practice drawing… Japanese tattoos on my friends, and I just always loved it and would always return to it, that style of art.”
The “tactical urbanism” movement for public transportation and safe, walkable communities:
“Our main goal is to protect the public… and to create safe, beautiful spaces,” said Padgett. “So there’s a communication link now, and we can ask the neighborhood, ‘How can you feel safer?’ And then we can tie that in with beautification. So I, with my time at SCAD, I really got obsessed with Bauhaus and its form and function combined, and you get really, really beautiful things that are incredibly functional. And tactical urbanism is a way to scratch that itch in my brain.”
She added, “Artwork is going to move humans around. And so if we’re going to have people come visit an area, we want to make sure that there’s places that they can feel safe, and I think tactical urbanism is a really beautiful way to do that, and that’s happening all over Atlanta right now. Definitely get involved wherever you’re living.”
More on the Oct. 22 events taking place in Kirkwood for the new Off the Tracks Mural Festival can be found at https://www.offthetracksinc.org/
