Start at the corner of N. Davidson & 35th Street
Title: "Bloom"
Location: 3200 N. Davidson Street side wall
Artist: Osiris Rain
Date: 2017
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @osirisrain
Story: “Bloom” is a 46-foot by 10-foot mural by artist Osiris Rain with assistance from Nick Napoletano. Originally the mural included a branding logo for Stella Artois, but the current rendition reflects changes. A signature component of many of Rain’s murals are his grey-scale human faces.
Key Formal Elements:
- Dominant colors are warm hues of yellow, orange, and red
- Delicate use of the cool color blue around the lotus flower creates a focal point
Make the Connection:
Iconography of the lotus flower is shared by many ancient religions. As the focal point of this image, the lotus flower has potential symbolic meanings. How may the lotus flower be symbolic of rebirth in this location? Also, can you locate the crowns, which symbolize of the city of Charlotte? And can you see the letters Charlotte spelled out in the mural?
Look at the corner for the trash receptacle
Location: At the corner of 35th Street and N. Davidson Street
Artist: Grace Stott
Date: 2020
Media: Ceramics
Artist Info: @stott_pots
Story: NoDaRioty, the arts committee for the Historic North Charlotte Neighborhood Association, partnered with the City of Charlotte and the Neighborhood Matching Grants Program to commission artists to design existing trash receptacles. A call to artists was sent out and eight artists were chosen to produce their designs. Ceramic artist Grace Stott has a mosaic mural on our South End Tremont ArtWalk.
Key Formal Elements:
- Free-standing sculptures
- Texture
Make the Connection:
Eight artists and eight different designs. Artist Grace Stott places ceramic faces on three sides of the receptacle and adds lots of colorful neighborhood connections on the fourth side. Be on the lookout and see if you can find all eight in the business district.
Also consider doing the Trash Receptacle ArtWalk to learn about all 8 commissions and some facts on art and trash.
Look down at the pavement
Location: 3204 N. Davidson Street Center of the Earth medallion and benches in 3200 block
Artists: Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires
Date: 1980s
Media: Mosaic tile embedded in concrete
Artist Info: @ruthavalyonsart, www.jpaulsires.com
Story: Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires are artist legends in Charlotte. The artists found studio space in the NoDa area in the early 1980s, invested in properties, and started the artistic renaissance of the area. Their gallery was called Center of the Earth Gallery and located in this shopfront.
Key Formal Elements:
- Symmetrical balance
Make the Connection:
The artists also completed the mosaics on the benches in front of the shopfront. Both artists use a great deal of natural forms in their work. Lyons works mostly in two-dimensional mixed media paintings. Sires works as a sculptor mostly in marbles and granites.
Look down at the street
Location: Loading zone in the 3200 block of N. Davidson Street
Artist: Osiris Rain
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @osirisrain
Story: This project was a partnership between the Charlotte Department of Transportation and Sustain Charlotte for the OpenStreets704 biking celebration in Spring 2018. CDOT removed the parking lanes to create a loading zone and to ease congestion in front of the fire department.
Key Formal Elements:
- Repetition of patterns
- Warm, secondary color of orange forms the main area of the flower
Make the Connection:
During the OpenStreets704 festival, the artist provided stencils so that members of the community were able to contribute to painting the flowers and be a part of this community art project.
Walk to end of buildings, look right
Location: 3204 N. Davidson Street Wall Poem
Artists: Wall Poems of Charlotte, Amy Bagwell, Graham Carew, The Mural Shop
Date: 2016
Media: Acrylic paint
Artists Info: @wallpoems, @emotiontapes, @grahamcarew, @mural shop
Story: Wall Poems of Charlotte is an effort to integrate poetry into urban areas of the city. The organization has completed over a dozen installations featuring the work of North Carolina poets. “Untitled” is a poem by William Harmon, a North Carolina native and retired professor of poetry at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Key Formal Elements:
- The repetition and uniformity of the letters suggest the ocean on a calm day
- Cool color blue suggests water
Make the Connection:
Read each line carefully. Are they all the same? Do the words you can see have any relationship to each other?
Canoe is an anagram of ocean. An anagram is a word formed by rearranging the letters of another word. Are there any other ways these two words are related?
Can you make a connection between this poem and Harmon’s service with the United States Navy in Vietnam?
Located on same wall
Location: 3204 N. Davidson Street painting beside the Wall Poem
Artist: William Puckett
Date: 2012
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @mr_puckett
Story: William Puckett’s political painting celebrates Barack Obama’s 2012 candidacy for President of the United States.
Key Formal Elements:
- Primary colors of red and blue
- Strong vertical lines of red stripes suggest power and strength
Make the Connection:
The idea of appropriation is central to contemporary art works. Appropriation in art is the use of existing imagery in new works. Puckett draws upon some imagery in the iconic “Hope” Obama poster design by Shepard Fairy, which was also created in 2012. Perhaps Puckett also makes a connection to Faith Ringgold, a prominent African-American artist and her work done during the Civil Rights Era. Do you feel that art loses any of its originality if artists borrow from historical sources?
Look at corner of N. Davidson & 36th Street
Location: Corner of N. Davidson & 36th Street
Artists: Jason Lee Parker
Date: 2020
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @tinker_bird_
Story: NoDaRioty, the arts committee for the Historic North Charlotte Neighborhood Association, partnered with the City of Charlotte and the Neighborhood Matching Grants Program to commission artists to design existing trash receptacles. A call to artists was sent out and eight artists were chosen to produce their designs.
Key Formal Elements:
- Cool colors of the background
- Contour lines on the hands
Make the Connection:
Eight artists and eight different designs.
Tinker Bird placed the letters N-O-D-A in both English and American Sign Language on his trash receptacle. Self-described tinkerer, artist, and carpenter, he draws his influences from street art, skate culture and his time in a band. His message is meant to “celebrate diversity and inclusiveness.”
Turn right and walk to Smelly Cat
Location: 514 E. 36th Street sculpture out front of Smelly Cat Coffee
Artist: Theron Ross
Date: 2011
Media: Metal
Artist Info: @theronross
Story: Playful sculpture in front of Smelly Cat Coffee House draws attention to the business and it is a bike rack that acts as a functional element of the streetscape. This project was a collaboration between NoDaRioty, the arts committee of the Historic North Charlotte Neighborhood Association and the Neighborhood Energy Challenge Grant. “Pimp my Rack” allowed Ross, a metal-worker and blacksmith, an opportunity to create six artistic bicycle rack designs. Five are still located in the neighborhood.
Key Formal Elements:
- Three-dimensional, free-standing sculpture
- Clever use of negative space
Make the Connection:
The sculpture was recently yarn bombed by fiber artist Jessica Allen @desertroseknittco. Yarn bombing is a type of graffiti or street art that uses colorful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fiber arts. Be on the lookout for other items that have been yarn bombed in NoDa.
At the Corner of Yadkin and 36th
Location: Corner of Yadkin & 36th Street
Artist: Pam Imhof
Date: 2020
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @leftbrainedartist
Story: NoDaRioty, the arts committee for the Historic North Charlotte Neighborhood Association, partnered with the City of Charlotte and the Neighborhood Matching Grants Program to commission artists to design existing trash receptacles. A call to artists was sent out and eight artists were chosen to produce their designs.
Key Formal Elements:
- Actual texture
- Functional art
Make the Connection:
Four sides of playful animals such as a salamander, a penguin, a giraffe, and a racoon entertain the viewer. Right before this project, Imhof painted a crosswalk in Plaza-Midwood and hopes to do more public art in Charlotte.
Walk half block to Company Store
Location: 3221 Yadkin Avenue walls of the NODA Company Store
Artists: Matt Hooker, Matt Moore
Date: 2016
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @hookermedia, @puckmcgruff
Story: Artists Matt Hooker and Matt Moore researched the history of the North Davidson Street area for inspiration. NoDa has transitioned from rolling farmland during the American Revolution, to a major textile center during the 20th century, to one of Charlotte’s art and entertainment centers today.
Key Formal Elements:
- Entire mural rendered in grey-scale tones
- Variety created through the contrast of light and dark
Make the Connection:
The history of NoDa plays a starring role in these murals. Starting on the front wall, the artists draw connections to farming, and include a portrait of American Revolution leader General William Lee Davidson. Around the corner, can you locate the reference to the Highland Manufacturing Co. Mill No. 3 which opened in 1903? The mill produced mostly gingham fabric. Can you find where the artists included gingham? There are also humorous references to the criminal element that oral histories tell us existed in NoDa over the course of its history.
Peek down alley
Location: End of alley along side wall of NoDa Company Store
Artist: Osiris Rain
Date: 2017
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @osirisrain
Story: This piece of art transforms a concrete block wall that houses garbage behind this business.
Key Formal Elements:
- Highlights located on the eyelids, forehead, and chin
- Geometric patterns create contrast with organic lines of figure
Make the Connection:
The owner of this business turned a potentially unattractive garbage collection area into an opportunity to showcase art. On your walk, see if you can imagine other spaces that could benefit from an artistic intervention.
Walk to corner of 35th and Yadkin
Location: Corner of 35th Street and Yadkin
Artist: Luvly Moon
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@luvlymoon
Story: Local artist Luvly Moon knew she wanted to be a professional artist at the age of 16. Influences for her art include street art, healing energy, and the desire to create uplifting messages. A member of the Tough Ass Crew artist collective and a META Artist Residency program participant, her art is simple and emotional.
Key Formal Elements:
- Use of outline on all four sides
- Lots of cool colors but some warm colors on the sides with the yellow stars and pink background.
Make the Connection:
Connections to Charlotte are included by the artist in the colors of teal and purple and if you look closely, the cute characters are wearing crowns. The artist calls these figures “space beans” and they are characters that travel the cosmos looking for the answers to life’s questions and inspiration. Sounds like all of us.
Cross to corner with pink utility box
Location: Yadkin and 35th Street
Artist: Poet Was Taken
Date: 2020
Media: Acrylic paint and paste up
Artist Info: @poetwastaken
Story: Los Angeles-based street artist Poet Was Taken combines stencils, paste ups, and text to create a type of guerilla lovefare. All in the color PINK. NoDa just had a @poetwastaken take over and three pieces were created in the central business area and one new mural was created at CanJam across the railroad tracks.
Key Formal Elements:
- Limited palette
- Installation
Make the Connection:
Text in art is not a new thing. You can go back to the early twentieth century to see text in art by Picasso, in Dada and Surrealist art, and even more contemporary examples like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. So, yea, it’s a thing.
Each street art installation by this artist has some sort of text written as lines of love poetry. The text celebrates love or a message of love in some way. But there may be a hint of something else appearing in the language. Think it over.
Look at the street
Location: 516 E. 35thStreet
Artist: Ruth Ava Lyons
Date: 2020
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @ruthavalyonsart
Story: The City of Charlotte loves murals. Their Urban Design Center and the Office of Sustainability are supporting local artists and filling Charlotte’s streets with murals this summer. Artists from the City’s Placemaking Artist Pool are installing street murals that capture the impact of COVID – 19 and the resiliency and sustainability of our city.
Key Formal Elements:
- Asymmetrical balance
- Focal point of the black dandelion
Make the Connection:
According to Lyons, “the dandelion symbolizes our ability and determination to proliferate in the most difficult circumstances and places.” As an artist, Lyons draws much of her inspiration from nature and in this case from a lowly weed. A weed that never gives up, shows up in all the wrong places, demands attention and then becomes an ethereal seed to grow somewhere else. A beautiful lesson for our times.
Look at side wall of 510 Expert Tattoos
Location: 510 E. 35th Street wall at 510 Expert Tattoos
Artist: Tom Michael
Date:
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @uglytom
Story: Large eagle with fully spread wings covers half of a side wall of the tattoo studio. Blue and white fluffy clouds fill in the rest of the areas.
Key Formal Elements:
- Implied motion of the bird in flight
- Asymmetrical balance with the focal point behind the eagle at the point where the red sunbursts begin
Make the Connection:
The eagle can be symbolic of many things in art. Going back to the founding of the United States, the eagle can be a symbol of power, courage, independence, and freedom. How does the choice of subject matter for this mural relate to the business?
Catch the Dumpster Mural behind the building
Location: Directly behind the building located at N. Davidson Street and E. 35th Street and across from 510 Expert Tattoo
Artist: Osiris Rain
Date: 2017
Media Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @osirisrain
Story: Neighborhood arts leader, Paul Sires commissioned artist Osiris Rain to paint a mural on the private dumpster Sires installed behind the building he owned. Rain painted one of his trademark portraits in grey scale and covered one side with flowers. Recently, the mural got an addition from @poetwastaken. Check out the poetry of this Los Angeles based street artist!
Key Formal Elements:
- Realistic highlights on the tip of the nose and forehead
- Cool colors of the blue background contrast with the warm colors of the flowers
Make the Connection:
Shortly after this piece was completed, it generated a good bit of controversy. Apparently, city zoning regulations require a fence or screening to hide a dumpster from public view. Articles in the paper and news segments debated whether the city should enforce this zoning regulation or issue a waiver and allow the mural to remain. Since it would take 2 years to get a hearing from the city, official are waiving the $50 per day penalty until a solution is found. Do you think the city should issue a waiver or enforce the rules? Why?