Two Atlantans hit the Krog Street tunnel at dawn Sunday, painting over banner-type advertisements for the Reynoldstown neighborhood’s annual Wheelbarrow Festival and the Art-B-Q in Avondale Estates.
They rolled white paint across the frame of the graffiti-covered tunnel that fronts DeKalb Avenue as a video camera across the street captured their work.
And, as the sun rose, the pair dipped into green and yellow paint and used a couple of cut-out patterns to leave their own anti-BP message, complete with the oil giant’s Helios logo -- for the Greek sun god.
The hour's worth of work is on YouTube under the name AtlantaPublicAccess. The video is not suitable for work due to profanity. The artists -- who are also the photographers -- used time-lapse technology to compress their efforts into three minutes.
The video has gotten more than 43,500 hits since it was posted.
“We’re not real graffiti taggers, we just work right there in the area, and we were watching some people on Saturday doing work on the insides of the tunnel there,” said Clayton Marcus, who painted the sign along with Brad Goodwin.
“We figured if we made it white and left a space around the logo, we’d make it sort of impactful. We thought it would be painted over by now."
Marcus said he and Goodwin work in the video industry, so “of course we’re going to record it.”
They joked about the video going viral but never thought it would. Between social media networks such as Facebook, the sign has gotten a lot of attention.
And, like the varying attitude toward the graffiti, murals and spray-painted philosophical messages on the 100-year-old Krog Street tunnel, the message has garnered an array of comments.
“Clean … simple … excellent execution and perfect placement. Keep it up,” manufactured00 commented on YouTube.
“And what did that solve? Nothing of course,” said dh63701.
Marcus said they were apprehensive about painting the tunnel regardless of it having somewhat landmark counterculture status. The video shows the pair ducking down at one point when a patrol car rolled slowly through the intersection.
“We wouldn’t have done that on somebody’s personal, private property. That sort of stuff [irritates] us,” he said. “This is a spot where it’s accepted. We thought we’d be all right on this occasion.”
Years ago, a former Cabbagetown neighborhood president was pushing to make the area an arrest-free zone for artists.
The Atlanta Police Department, however, said Tuesday that that is not the case. The tunnel is part of City of Atlanta government property, and anyone caught defacing it is subject to misdemeanor charges, an APD spokesman said.
It’s been 56 days since oil began spilling from a BP-operated rig and into the Gulf. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and has sent more than 114 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, covering birds, coating shorelines and threatening coastal industries.
BP’s latest efforts to capture some of the oil were disrupted Tuesday when lightning struck the ship trying to contain it and a fire broke out.
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