Since its inception in 2007 — spurred by a request from then-Mayor Mark Mallory — ArtWorks’ mural program has been a boon to public art along the streets of Cincinnati.
The nonprofit organization has created 101 of them through last year, ranging from a historic-photo-based rendering of men on a barge in downtown’s Miami and Erie Canal circa 1900 to a vibrantly Pop, forcefully expressive and almost-literally kinetic take on King Records artist James Brown rocking his microphone while passionately singing.
This year will bring 23 new murals painted by 140 youths hired as part of ArtWorks’ Summer Apprentice Program, plus approximately seven additional murals not part of that program.
You’ve probably seen scaffolding go up around town as the apprentices and their supervisors — lead artists, teaching artists and project managers — turn the designs by commissioned artists into actual murals. In many cases, ArtWorks partners with sponsors and donors to fund the murals.
That’s an impressive accomplishment. But to those at ArtWorks, the murals program is more than just a success in its own right. It’s also “a force for good,” in the words of Tamara Harkavy, the CEO and artistic director of the nonprofit arts organization.
The murals have been good for ArtWorks, certainly. The organization, located in Over-the-Rhine just north of downtown, started in 1996 and states its mission as employing and training local youth and other creative individuals to achieve community impact through a public-art program, an art therapy division and an entrepreneurial arm.
“We always knew we were doing good with our artists and with our kids, and for our partners,” Harkavy says. “But until we did the public art — the murals and the stuff on the street — we were not really visible to the city. We’re so fortunate to have been invited to do this for our city.”
But ArtWorks has also been a force for good in the city and its neighborhoods, Harkavy believes. As an example, she mentions something she observed in Northside, where a 2007 mural of oversized daisies blooming along the wall of an older brick building on Hamilton Avenue communicates a summery, refreshing friendliness all year long.
“I was sitting in a restaurant across the street and a news crew was filming something in front of the mural,” Harkavy says. “And it was something good — it wasn’t a crime story or a disaster.” Appealing murals, then, improve the perceptions of their surroundings.
This year on Nov. 18, ArtWorks will celebrate its 21st anniversary — an event signifying a rite of passage and a new level of maturity. Ahead of that milestone, ArtWorks’ mural program already has upped its game.
Two Iranian-born, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based stencil artists known as ICY and SOT have already completed a new mural with a pointedly political anti-gun-violence message on the façade of downtown’s Christ Church Cathedral. And ArtWorks commissioned a Brazilian street artist, Eduardo Kobra, to create its largest mural to date in 2017, a riotously colorful one honoring the late astronaut Neil Armstrong. Kobra recently did a similar piece in Minneapolis commemorating Bob Dylan.
Harkavy wants that higher level of work to continue. “I’m hoping we’ll be invited to take some risks and do some things that are a little different, or cost some money,” she says.
Here is a look at some of this year’s new ArtWorks murals scheduled to be completed in August. The descriptions are based on provided renderings, as well as visits to works-in-progress. Not all the new murals have official titles yet. In some cases, ArtWorks is still seeking donations for costs. Visit artworkscincinnati.org for more information.
“Swing Around Rosie” Mural
Location: 1606 Pleasant St., Over-the-Rhine | Artist: Natalie Lanese
“Swing Around Rosie” is the name of the Rosemary Clooney mural that is a new addition to ArtWorks’ Legends series (which also features murals dedicated to James Brown, Ezzard Charles and Henry Holtgrewe). Designed by Natalie Lanese, an Ohio native, it’s on the exterior of a building at 1606 Pleasant St. in Over-the-Rhine, facing Liberty Street.
Clooney, a glamorous Jazz and Pop singer (“Come On-a My House,” “Mambo Italiano”) and film star with hits in the late 1940s and 1950s, was born and raised in Maysville, Ky., and got her start at Cincinnati’s WLW radio station. Although she died in 2002, her regional popularity has only grown, partly because two of her biggest advocates are themselves celebrities — brother and TV host/anchorman Nick and nephew and Academy Award-winning actor George.
“My design began as a series of hand-painted color studies, which I photographed and began digitally arranging and rearranging with the image of Rosemary,” says designer Lanese via email. “I selected an image from White Christmas, since it is one of her most iconic roles and my favorite. The color palette was selected based on popular product and advertising colors of the mid-1950s, when the film was released, and updated with the use of intense neons. The pattern is one that I’ve used almost exclusively in my work for the past decade. By slicing and manipulating the pattern and figurative elements, I hope to create a disruption of the surface and the illusion of depth of space — something I’ve explored with collage and continue to investigate with abstraction. The repetition of the figure loosely recalls the movement of a filmstrip.”
“We Need Education, Not Violence” Mural
Location: 318 E. Fourth St., Downtown Artists: ICY and SOT
“We Need Education, Not Violence” is the title for ICY and SOT’s new mural on the façade of Christ Church Cathedral on Fourth Street downtown. It is different from the other murals in that it didn’t use apprentices and is considered a product of a division of ArtWorks known as ArtRx, part of its art-therapy program. It’s also meant to be temporary — six months or longer.
In this case, The Very Rev. Gail Greenwell, dean of the historic and socially active Episcopal cathedral, requested a mural that specifically addressed this subject and could catch people’s attention. This large 20-by-24-foot mural, prominently placed in the heart of downtown on a busy street, should do that.
ICY and SOT, two brothers from Tabriz, Iran, now based in Brooklyn, N.Y., specialize in stenciling. While they are street artists who have worked internationally, their mastery has led to gallery and museum shows. One popular theme for them, used here in Cincinnati, is to depict “art weapons” in which murderous guns have been transformed into creative paintbrushes, pencils and cutters.
The two artists created some 25 stencils by hand in Brooklyn for this mural, which they then assembled at the Duke Energy Convention Center in June by spray-painting the overall design onto vinyl. They also hand-painted certain elements, like the pencils, directly onto the vinyl. The vinyl was installed onto a wood frame on the façade of the church. There will be a public dedication for this project at noon on Sept. 8.
“We wanted to stimulate conversation in the city about gun violence and possible solutions,” Greenwell says. “The artists interpreted that as (depicting) a diverse group of people who seem to be holding automatic weapons but that are really pencils. I see it as empowering people to find alternatives in life other than gun violence.”
Annie Oakley Mural
Location: 3211 Madison Road, Oakley | Artist: Nicole Trimble
That woman with a rifle on a mural high up on a commercial building in Oakley is Annie Oakley, the world-famous sharpshooter who was a star with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in the late 19th century. Some say she was America’s first great showbiz figure, and her appeal has lasted. She was the subject of a classic Broadway musical, Annie Get Your Gun, and also of a TV series.
That would clearly seem to make her a worthy candidate for a Legends mural. She was born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860 near Greenville, Ohio, and showed prowess as a shooter early on.
She is said to have participated in gun events in Cincinnati as a teen. She also lived in Oakley for a while after marrying her sharpshooting partner, Frank Butler, and is thought to have selected her professional name in tribute the neighborhood.
The mural will have the appearance of a decorative entertainment poster with psychedelic touches. It will bear a hip retro look in the way Oakley, in Western gear, stands amid a shades-of-blue background, and above a slightly ornate yellow banner declaring her “Little Sure Shot.” Its location is high up on a rear wall of a commercial building at 3211 Madison Road.
Nicole Trimble, the lead artist and project man- ager, has a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.
Five Points Alley Mural
Location: 2429 Gilbert Ave., Walnut Hills | Artist: Morag Myerscough
ArtWorks is also working with BLDG and the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation to celebrate a most ambitious Cincinnati alley restoration. The foundation has been in the process of transforming a hidden pocket of the neighborhood, where five alleys come together near the southwestern corner of Gilbert Avenue and E. McMillan Street, into a park-like gathering spot called Five Points Alley. The alleys surround a triangular piece of land.
“It started a few years back as a neighborhood cleanup of a bad area,” says Kevin Wright, executive director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation. “Then we started to program it for the volunteers with pop-up beer gardens and it became very popular.”
As part of that project, the foundation commissioned four lively way-finding murals last year, each depicting separate numerals from one to four. ArtWorks has joined in on the fifth and largest for the southern side of the Race Refrigeration building at 2429 Gilbert Ave.
As designed by Scottish artist Morag Myerscough, it will say “We Are Walnut Hills” and “5 Points Alley” with bright, thick 3-D lettering and a number “5” with curves as big as a racetrack.
Once it’s done, the foundation will need a new “number four” mural. It had been painted on a vacant building recently demolished by the Port Authority of Greater Cincinnati.
Little Nemo Comic Strip Mural
Location: 901 Main St., Downtown | Artist: Winsor McCay
The Winsor McCay mural at 901 Main St. (just north of Ninth Street) is part of the Cincinnati Masters Series, in which a work by a well-regarded local artist is replicated on a downtown wall. These so far have included wildlife painter John A. Ruthven, Modernist nature artist Charley Harper, Pop pioneer Tom Wesselmann and painter Elizabeth Nourse.
But unlike those, McCay’s connection to Cincinnati isn’t so strong, and his primary medium — newspaper comic strips — has been slow to establish its claim as a fine art. But, as contemporary graphic novelists like Chris Ware have become respected for a highly detailed, richly decorative and sometimes-surreal style that shows a McCay influence, his reputation has grown. (McCay was also an early animator.)
Not a native, McCay lived in Cincinnati from 1891-1903 where he began to develop his style as a newspaper artist, at first at the Commercial Tribune and then especially at The Cincinnati Enquirer, where a series of drawings has since been called critical in his development as a comic-strip master. (He also met his future wife here.)
After he moved to New York, he created his sensational full-page color strip Little Nemo in Slumberland for the New York Herald in 1905 and his reputation soared.
This mural will reproduce in full a six-panel, full-page Little Nemo color comic strip from 1906. “I haven’t seen a lot of public murals that adopt the sequential narrative form of a comic,” says Tim Parsley, the mural’s project manager.
Kenner Toys Mural
Location: 23 W. Court St., Downtown | Artist: Jonathan Queen
For Jonathan Queen, the hyperrealist painter whose “Fresh Harvest” mural on the Kroger Building wall depicts an abundance of oversized produce with an Old Masters assuredness, designing a mural dedicated to Cincinnati’s toy heritage is an easy choice. He’s been painting vintage toys in his studio for years. “When they told me a toy mural was available and asked would I be interested, I of course said yes,” he says.
The mural will pay tribute to the heritage of Cincinnati toy manufacturer Kenner Products, which operated here from 1946-2000 — first independently and then as a division of several larger companies. The last owner was the still-active Rhode Island-based Hasbro, and the Hassenfeld Foundation, associated with Hasbro, is one of the mural sponsors.
The mural has a prime downtown space at 23 W. Court St., on the western side of a building being rehabbed by Towne Properties, another sponsor. It depicts toys with some kind of Kenner or Hasbro connection. Kenner’s greatest legacy was its Star Wars toy line, which received renewed attention when that movie franchise itself was revived last year with The Force Awakens. So the mural has several of those. It also has Ghostbusters, the Spirograph, Play-Doh, Care Bear, M.A.S.K., and Hasbro’s Mr. Potato Head.
Queen is trying to make the mural look as painterly as possible by using warm light and cool color, and is posing the toys so they interact with each other. “I’m treating it like a still life painting, not like a catalog page,” he says.
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This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 3, 2016.
