mural update

A year ago today, the corner of 42nd and Mission Rd sat empty, riddled with trash, the wall bore chipping white and yellow paint, and a deep frost spat out by Old Man Winter covered the cracked asphalt.

Once again, Old Man Winter has officially arrived but, the 42nd Street Mural Project is far from cold.

The spring and summer months brought sweet change to the empty lot. White primer covered the cracking paint, tree limbs were pulled out and thrown away, and a garden was created with help of a local church, several local neighborhood youth and a small grant from the Thrivent Foundation.

But the ascetic enhancement, alone, was and could not be enough. The scope of our efforts had always included creating a youth collaborated mural.

Our original plan was to create, during the summer months, a large scale youth inspired mural with the help of Joe Faus.

Our funding hopefuls, however, always seemed to fall short. So in mid summer, when City Visionaries, an art organization that creates murals in KCMO, decided to sponsor (monetarily) a a portion of the project, we knew we had to shift our originals plans a bit. With limited time and funds, Mikey was able to secure the help of a local artist by the name of Holly Swangstu. She was a friend of Joe's and agreed to do two art enriched focus groups with youth from Rosedale and in turn take their ideas and create a collaborative 'art frame' for the site.

This endeavor would indeed leave a large portion of the wall white yet we believed the creativity displayed would yield a hopeful approach to the future of the lot.

Holly efforts have done just that.

After meeting with 6 to 8 young people, all of which attend school at Rosedale Middle Holly was able to pull the 'groups' ideas into a collaborative art piece.

By the end of august, at last, there was color on the walls of 42nd and Mission Road.

The work however isn't done, for there is still a plethora of white space on the walls. Holly's frame, though, has become the catalyst to an idea Mikey Fletcher likes to call the revolving mural...