In spring of this year, Atlanta artist Yuzly Mathurin faced a rough stone wall two stories high overlooking an alley. Just as challenging as her canvas was the cultural context she wanted to capture: A gunman had recently killed eight people, including six Asian Americans, in metro Atlanta, and the George Floyd murder trial had focused attention once again on his death.

“When it comes to public art, it’s important to convey what’s happening around you,” she said. “I thought it was appropriate to do something that was uplifting. I wanted to do something that would make people smile when they looked at the wall.”

Her mural shows a determined African-American woman in a flowered kimono, one sneakered foot planted firmly forward, and the words “Spread Love Not Hate.”

Credit: Brock Scott

Credit: Brock Scott

But before she got very far in painting the mural on the back wall of the Plaza Theatre in Poncey Highland, Mathurin had a visitor. “There’s a well-known graffiti artist who lives in the neighborhood who saw me working. I had a conversation with him about what I was doing. That can make a big difference, them seeing who I am and my vibe.”

The upshot: Three months later, the mural is pristine, with no graffiti defacing it. It’s a mark of the respect that taggers have consistently shown to the many public murals around Atlanta, especially the ones commissioned by Living Walls.

In little more than a decade, Living Walls, a non-profit organization that curates and produces public art, has grown from a scrappy little upstart to a mainstream arts institution, one that specializes in promoting artists of color, female artists and LGBTQ artists.

Living Walls brings both quantity and quality to the mural scene here, according to Art Rudnick, whose website StreetArtMap.org is a comprehensive source of information on murals in metro Atlanta.

His website has logged about 1,200 murals in the metro area, and Living Walls is responsible for more than 200 of those. “They bring in international world class talent to do murals here, and that’s a pretty big accomplishment,” Rudnick said.

“Living Walls has really elevated public art in Atlanta. It’s changed the conversations we have around public art, how it can speak to the issues of our day,” said Marian Liou, program manager of community engagement and arts for the Atlanta Regional Commission.

As an art form, murals are older than most of what we call civilization, as old as the Stone Age cave paintings in the south of France and as new as the big-bucks whimsy of London’s Banksy.

In recent years, the concept of New Urbanism has sought to reimagine cities and neighborhoods as more livable and sustainable for its inhabitants. Public art, including murals, has frequently been a part of that new approach. The explosion of murals in Atlanta is also being seen in cities throughout the world.

Credit: Tatiana Bell

The nonprofit advocacy group Americans for the Arts asserts in its 2018 report “Why Public Art Matters”: “When people see themselves reflected in their civic spaces, they have a sense of attachment that allows them to feel ownership and respect. Attachment to a location, whether it be a neighborhood, town or city, is key to retention of residents and commuters alike.”

Monica Campana, executive director of Living Walls, emigrated to the United States from Peru when she was 15 and settled in Atlanta in 2007. She attended SCAD and the Art Institute of Atlanta, and went on nighttime guerrilla art attacks around the city, drawing on large sheets of paper and pasting them up, unauthorized, on walls. On a whim in 2008, she and a friend, Blacki Migliozzi, got a $4,000 grant from Eye Drum to hold a street art festival with artists painting murals around town. They called themselves Living Walls.

“We were like a bunch of kids doing this. We were very naïve,” she recalls. “But it couldn’t just be an art show. It had to be a conversation.”

That word, “conversation,” is as important to Living Walls as the word “art.” It comes up often among the artists, the funders, the go-betweens and volunteers. Living Walls is about conversations with the communities where the art exists.

In 2012, the young non-profit stubbed its toe with a large mural in the Pittsburgh neighborhood that some residents thought had satanic symbols. To make matters worse, the wall’s owner was misidentified when permission was secured, and the mural had to be painted over.

As a result, said Campana, “developing a better community engagement process is still something we are trying to learn. Community is not just one thing; it’s different depending on where you go. We cannot assume this is how you create good public art or this is what a good city looks like.

“It’s been 10 years of listening and humbling ourselves down every day because we don’t know everything,” she concluded.

Late last year, Living Walls partnered with Adult Swim, an Atlanta-based network, to showcase up-and-coming African-American artists in Atlanta. They have one permanent wall (to the extent any street art is permanent) and three that are repainted anew in spring and fall, including Yuzly Mathurin’s mural.

“The Adult Swim Mural Project happened in response to the national acknowledgement of racial injustice that occurred last summer,” said Adult Swim senior production manager Bridgette Kimbrough. “We saw our opportunity as opening up a platform to local talent and keeping it local, because change starts at home.”

Artists who work on the Adult Swim mural praise the company for allowing them total artistic freedom.

“Working with Living Walls and Adult Swim was a dream come true,” said artist SOFAHOOD, who painted a massive “Power to the People” mural on Edgewood Avenue in Old Fourth Ward. “They really embraced my work and celebrated me as an artist.

“When people see my mural, I want them to know that all of the subjects are both Black and queer, like many people in Atlanta,” she added. “And I want viewers to know that all power belongs to the people.”

Living Walls’ Adult Swim Mural Project has expanded to another city, with three murals recently completed in New Orleans. The partners plan to roll out to other cities as well.

Perhaps the most ambitious Living Walls mural ever was completed in June in Midtown. Entitled “Merge,” it dominates an entire city block on Armstead Place between West Peachtree and Spring streets, spanning 150 feet wide and 40 feet high on the side of Coda Tech Square.

“That mural was four years in the making,” said Campana. “We started the conversation before there was even a hole in the ground.”

Credit: Brock Scott

A nod to the disorienting works of M.C. Escher, the mural was painted by Barcelona artist Cinta Vidal. It’s a double anamorphosis, meaning there are two different perspectives that shift depending on where the viewer stands in relation to the painting.

“The abstract architecture in which the characters travel refers to the scientific innovation that transports us to unexpected places,” said Ginny Kennedy, director of urban design for the Midtown Alliance, one of several key players involved in “Merge.”

According to the website, Living Walls’ goal is to create “intentional, thought-provoking art to inspire social change and activate public spaces.”

“The problem with fine art in the modern world is the barrier of walking into a museum or gallery,” said Kimbrough. “The intentional and thoughtful placement of art in public spaces gives art back its power and establishes an open conversation between the artist and the audience.”