The sun shines on Broadway and the paintbrushes start flying. Spray cans, too. On your stroll down the Hill’s main cruise, you should start to see some new art projects underway — nine of them, in fact. Eight small. One big. 60-feet big.
The design for a new mural underway on Broadway: Watching Emeralds
This biggie of the bunch is a new mural in progress on the Sound Transit construction wall. Last July, the 135-foot mural on the 10th Ave side of the project was painted. Now it’s time for a big, colorful mural on the Broadway side of the construction zone. Like the Baso Fibonacci work on 10th, the Broadway addition has plenty of street credibility. Here’s more from the Sound Transit’s STart program blog:
Specs one at work (Image: STart)
Specs one, a Seattle native, is a musician, visual artist, and elder in the underground art community. He’s a noted MC and beat-maker; dubbed by writer/journalist Charles Mudede as “Seattle’s Baudelaire”, and often described as “The Holy Ghost of Northwest underground hip hop”. Wandering the streets with Specs is to hear tales of various scenes dating from the late 70’s, now since vanished, to the street happenings of today. In addition to working on songs, film scores, performing live, and writing; Specs also has produced a series of comics under Capstan Media, and recently published ‘Mux Adapter’, a graphic novel. For the Capitol Hill Wall Project, he will be painting a 60 ft. mural on Broadway entitled, “Watching Emeralds”; a homage to his hometown.
Images: CHS
Meanwhile, paint is also drying on a series of utility box projects up and down Broadway. The first was completed this week near Poppy and echoes its sponsor’s orange palette.
According to Michael Wells of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and the Broadway Improvement Association, the painted utility boxes are a project backed by City of Seattle program Urban ArtWorks and individual Broadway sponsors. City Hall tells us Urban Artworks received a Department of Neighborhoods grant to paint boxes along Broadway starting at Roy and ending at Pine. The plan is for eight boxes to get the treatment in coming weeks. The roster of neighborhood sponsors provided to us by the chamber is below:
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Primed yellow and ready for actionGSBA
- Three Dollar Bill
- Broadway Market Video
- Poppy
- Charlie’s Bar and Grill
- Table 219
- Perfect Copy & Print
- The Broadway Grill
When are they going to get rid of the ads on the construction wall?
This is a great idea…though the plain yellow box looks a little ordinary. Hopefully that’s not the finished product: looks just like those plastic bins that have free pamphlets in them advertising places for rent and workshops.
I’ve seen people actually stop and take pictures with the one near Poppy. Well done, whoever the artist was! :)
We will be painting 9 of the control boxes on broadway,
the one pictured here was the first and we’ll be working our way south.
The artwork is designed by Todd Lown and painted by Todd and myself.