Chene Street Mural Project

Chene Street, between Palmer & Hendrie on the east side.

During the summer of 2010, I created a mural on the original Zarembsky's building, an old supermarket style store. Now abandoned, this Chene Street relic sits lonely and delapidated, surrounded on all sides by other deteriorating buildings. When I saw that one day someone had boarded it up, I decided to paint it. (It later turned out that those that had boarded it were none other than the Black Bottom Social Club, and later they invited me to paint their sign.)

The building, prior to being boarded up and painted, was a big mess.

I gathered my paints and brushes and parked in front of the spot. I had invited all my friends to show up, because this was going to be a collaborative peformance piece- rather than painting what I wanted, I asked all participants to tell me what they wanted to see on that wall, where they wanted it, how big, etc. I was merely the medium which made their visions into a painting. Though my age group was present, they hung back in the crowd; most participants turned out to be between the ages of 6 and 12.

The participants crowd around the canvas.
(photo credit: django)

After drawing it with marker I went back the next few days to paint it. Community members approached me. Some wanted to talk about "Art". Some wanted to talk about the history of the area. Some, though, were disgusted by the content of the mural, saying "why is it so violent? isn't this area violent enough?" I explained the project, trying to emphasize how this was created by the imaginations of the neighborhood children- chillingly telling, no?

After drawing it, I went back to paint in the colors.
(photo credit: Garrett MacLean)

...met some of the neighborhood.
(photo credit: Garrett MacLean)

(photo credit: Garrett MacLean)

I thought it was extremely interesting the story that ended up taking place within the mural, without any previous plans or structure. This mural was built character by character, line by line. Animals fighting make-believe animal creatures fighting animals. There is a ketchup bottle "gangsta'." There is a rhino with a missile launcher, a rat with a pistol (shooting a peaceful tomato), an angry cheeseburger dropping pink bombs from the sky. A large cat (carrying a monkey, smoking, on its back) is trying to eat an armed chameleon, who is simultaneously attacking. A guarded castle sits in the background, watching the violence take place on a delapidated porch stoop. To the right a dark skinned, smoking, Superhero comes to save the day while a light skinned farmer on a bike retreats; all the while, a "Pig" (with a sheriff's badge) sits comfortably in the corner eating a cockroach. If one wanted to look deeper into this, be my guest: it's implications can be seen as astounding.

An interesting thread on the project:
http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?5840-Small-guerrilla-art-project-on-Chene-near-Ferry.