Take MARTA buses 102 or 2 down Ponce de Leon and there is a lot to see: historic buildings, hip small businesses, the homeless — and art. Art is all around, painted on buildings, underpasses and walls by some of the city’s best mural artists. What makes taking MARTA down Ponce special is that the bus driver is one of those artists.
Michael Wall is one of 30 Atlanta artists whose work was selected by ArtPop Street Gallery, and displayed on billboards throughout metro Atlanta. ArtPop is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based nonprofit organization that promotes local artists’ work on available outdoor advertising space. With the addition of Atlanta this March, ArtPop, which pays the production costs, operates in four cities and has featured more than 400 artists.
Credit: Mark Alberhasky
Credit: Mark Alberhasky
‘Adulting’ for Art
Wall, 30, grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and after graduating with a degree in visual arts and design from North Carolina A&T, relocated to Atlanta to try his hand at an art career. “I moved to Atlanta to see if I was as smart as I thought I was,” he says. “The art scene here is more challenging than in Greensboro. Here there’s a lot of gatekeeping; you have to know someone. Greensboro was more communal. Here they have billions of dollars for a stadium but no money for the arts or homeless people.”
Eventually, he did an art show with The T-Shirt Lady in East Atlanta Village and started meeting fellow artists such as Delta Tango Mike and Myer Bailey. However, like every hopeful artist, he needed to pay bills, and his $11-an-hour job at Target wasn’t cutting it. “The cost of living in Atlanta was more than I thought. I was living in a functional property. I would talk to the MARTA bus driver, and he recommended I apply for a job. I did,” he says. “After I was hired by MARTA, I said I would own a house in five years. I joined MARTA three years ago, and I just closed on my house in Decatur.”
In order to save money, Wall works long hours, usually a 90-hour-plus workweek. “This is a capitalist society. I have to pay bills, and I want to secure financial freedom or limited financial freedom. I have to cover costs. I’m ‘adulting’.”
Despite the almost neck-breaking work pace, he never stops painting. “If you’re doing something you love, you’ll find the time. People don’t forget to eat; I don’t forget to do my art.”
Capturing joy and love
Art, to Wall, is solving “complex problems with color and intention.” He mainly does oil paintings of Black women and children. “I want to capture the joy, love and expressions of people and their faces. There’s a reoccurring theme in society that paints Black people in a certain way metaphorically. I want to make the statement that Black people can be happy, sad. We’re whole complex beings. I try to answer those questions the best I can. Art is my way to get through life and tell my story and others.”
Two years ago, Wall started an oil painting of his wife, Danielle Simpson Wall, who recently graduated from Emory University with a master’s in theology. A friend of his, Joshua Henderson, an ArtPop artist in Charlotte, told him about the program. Wall finished the painting with the hope that it would be accepted by ArtPop and displayed in time for his wedding anniversary. “I submitted a picture of the painting, and it was accepted. It was a great surprise for my wife to see herself all over Atlanta. My mom and professors can pull it up on their phones. It was the luck of the draw that some of the paintings are on my bus route.”
His painting was one of 30 selected by a juried committee out of about 75 applicants, says Wendy Hickey, executive director of ArtPop. Wall’s painting “was just beautiful. It was original with great colors. It stood out. We knew it would play well on billboards, and it does. It’s outstanding.”
Art and Business
Since his ArtPop debut, Wall is shoring up the business side of his art career. He’s revamped his resume, applied to more art shows, worked on creating organic buzz and sent his work to companies looking to purchase art, including, ironically, MARTA. “It’s snowballing; it’s not going downhill. It’s steady.”
That’s exactly ArtPop’s goal. “We promote local artists, and we want art accessible to everyone, no matter where you live,” says Hickey. “It’s not only beautifying the city but you see artists and their work.”
The program seems to be working. The organization surveyed about 60 past Charlotte participants and found that 89% saw growth in their social media and website traffic; 41% earned more commissions and had an increase of 27% in sales. Another 59% saw growth in sales through ArtPop-related events.
“Our goal is to make sure that local artists can be successful and full-time artists. That’s our true nirvana,” Hickey says. “We want to rid the community of the starving artist stigma.” About 10% of ArtPop’s participants are now full-time artists.
Wall intends to join that group. “MARTA allows me to concentrate on my work, purchase supplies, buy a house with my own space for my art. But, I want to be an artist.”
He has a 10-year plan toward a full-time sustainable art career. “It’s not done overnight,” he says. “It takes time for a tree to grow.”
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