Are you a Talking Walls fan? Here is your chance to see alot of the Talking Walls murals. This Art Trail starts at the Trader Joe's in Midtown. There are 17 murals on this trail so make sure that you see them all! Cross at crosswalks, stay on sidewalks, and tag the artists, @artwalksclt and @talkingwallscharlotte with your photos.
Title: Trader Joe’s mural
Location: 1133 Metropolitan Avenue
Artist: Ivan Roque
Date: 2019
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@ivanjroque
Story: Miami, Florida based artist Ivan Roque gets the perfect location at the Metropolitan. You can see his mural each time you drive in circles looking for a parking place in this very busy shopping center. The colors, sun, and landscape of South Florida appear often in this artist’s work but here his inspiration is North Carolina.
Key Formal Elements:
A large brown trout with green and orange colors provides the focal point in this image. Found most often in mountain streams and lakes, the brown trout is native to this area. The artist frames the trout with blue iris flowers, another native species to North Carolina.
Title: “Plight of Hand”
Location: 1055 Metropolitan Avenue, 6th floor of the parking garage
Artist: Tay Douglas
Date: 2019
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @tarantuga
Story: If you made it to the top of the parking deck, you are rewarded with both a mural and a lovely view of uptown. Once a local artist and now based in the Northeast, @tarantuga lost a wall, then got a wall, and then finally got a lift to do his mural painting for Talking Walls 2019.
Key Formal Elements:
A large hand holds what looks like a mountain range. With the water behind, perhaps it is a reference to North Carolina and from the mountains to the sea.
Title: Extravaganza
Location: 1610 N. Tryon Street
Artist: BellaPhame
Date: 2019
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @bellaphame
Story: This Portugal-based husband and wife team form their artistic name with a combination of each of their individual names. They work internationally and were part of the 2019 Talking Walls.
Key Formal Elements:
The purple and teal colors represents their artistic partnership. Each color is a connection to one of them and their use is always balanced in their art. If you had an artistic color, what would it be?
Title: Pure Intentions mural
Location: 2215 N. Tryon Street
Artist: Arko & Owl
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@arko.art, @owl.clt
Story: Prominent local artists Arko and Owl are another husband and wife team whose projects embrace the balance of two very different artistic styles. Owl’s metaphysical blob forms of undulating lines flow across the wall. While the magical, fantasy landscapes produced by Arko tell a story of his make-believe world. Together they are richly layered and delight the eye. Oh, and the artists wear masks when they work.
Key Formal Elements:
Why wear a mask when they work? Each believes that working while masked allows them to create freely and removes any gender or ethnicity from their work. In this composition which spans two walls and a corner, an Arko figure sees a vision and follows that vision around the corner where the Owl blob forms flow across the doors. The playful figure on the green blobs of grass searches the landscape for more.
Title: “Queen Life”
Location: 3217 The Plaza
Artist: Ramiro Davaro-Comas
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@ramirostudios
Story: Ramiro Davaro-Comas is an Argentine-American artist living in NY and Director of Dripped on the Road, a traveling artist residency. As an artist, he’s inspired by street art and comics.
Key Formal Elements:
Eleven figures in princess dresses, thickly applied lipstick, and hair styled to the max line the wall of this bar. Purple, brown, red, or blue hair and frilly, patterned dresses guide your eye down the wall. Each celebrates the feminine and they are all queens of Charlotte. Do you have a favorite?
Title: “Almost Gone”
Location: 2902 The Plaza
Artist: Scott Nurkin
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @themuralshop
Story: Scott Nurkin grew up in Charlotte, went to UNC Chapel Hill and is the founder of The Mural Shop. His studio is currently working on a series of mural celebrating North Carolina musical legends. Give them a follow @ncmusicianmurals. In this mural, Nurkin features a dozen native species to North Carolina that are “critically endangered.”
Key Formal Elements:
From left to right here are the animals that are “critically endangered.” eastern cougar, noonday globe snail, Virginia big eared bat, bog turtle, St. Francis butterfly, green salamander, flying squirrel, short nose sturgeon, gopher frog, red wolf, and the right whale. It is hard to image that the next step for all of the animals is extinct.
Title: Ink Floyd mural
Location: 1101 E. 36th Street
Artist: Trasheer
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@trasheer
Story: Mexico City artist @trasheer is influenced by comics and surrealism and this mural is from the inaugural year of Talking Walls.
Key Formal Elements:
· Warm colors of the main areas of the figure with pops of the cool color blue
· Outline
Are you burning the candle at both ends? With a figure that is both human like but also animal like, maybe the artist is making a statement about our over stimulated world. Notice the use of the small comic book dots called Ben-Day dots.
Title: Talking Walls mural at Fat City Lofts
Location: 3123 N. Davidson Street
Artist: Neka King
Date: 2021
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @nnekkaa
Story: The Talking Walls mural festival is back in 2021 with a mission to “champion the diversity and vibrancy of our city through mural arts” and this TW mural does that and more. Atlanta-based muralist and illustrator Neka King uses the canvas of the former Fat City Deli side wall to produce a powerful gateway to NoDa, the city’s arts district. A recent graduate of Georgia State University, King works in portraiture to connect being Black, American, female and Southern. Here the artist uses an archival photograph of an African man to paint a signature portrait floating on the wall.
Key Formal Elements:
In work and words, King wants to disrupt the “canon” of standard art historical references. Here the portrait refers perhaps to a historical bust you may see rows of in a museum. But typically those busts are of white men and women. By disrupting our frame of reference, the artist invites the viewer to be a part of honoring Black bodies. How does the placement on this wall contribute to this message?
Also, so many art historical references here…if you want to go further google these artists, Aaron Douglas, Amy Sherald, Kara Walker, or Kerry James Marshall and get lost in the presentation of Black bodies.
Title: “La Patria”
Location: 1721 N. Davidson Street
Artist: Gus Cutty
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @guscutty
Story: Gus Cutty is Asheville based and a large part of the mural community of the Southeast. While his mural here at the Abari Game Bar is the only Talking Walls mural, take some time to look around at all of the other murals in this art hot spot.
Key Formal Elements:
Cutty wants us to think. He says that he prefers for his work to initiate conversation and this mural does indeed. In large letters, “La Patria” meaning homeland gives the viewer a frame of reference. Whose homeland? The close-up of a chain link fence, an historic sailing vessel, and a figure of a Black male. What types of questions about identity does he want you to consider?
Location: 1600 Central Avenue
Artist: Niki Zarrabi
Date: 2019
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @nikizarrabi
Story: Atlanta-based Niki Zarrabi painted this mural for Talking Walls 2019. Zarrabi, an Iranian-American mixed-media artist, works in both a smaller studio scale and very large outdoor mural projects.
Key Formal Elements:
Zarrabi explores a type of vanitas or imagery that suggests the fragile and fleeting quality of life. She is also interested in portraying power in typically feminine images. What details of the mural suggest the idea of the transience of life? How does the artist use feminine subject matter to suggest power?
Location: 1600 Central Ave on front wall of Pizza Peel
Artist: Darion Fleming
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @daflemingo
Story: This mural is a part of the 2018 Talking Walls Festival, a week-long celebration of murals and street arts. During Talking Walls 2018, 17 artists live-painted murals across the city. Local business sponsors supported the effort and the artists with walls to paint.
Key Formal Elements:
Darion Fleming is a young, talented artist who got his first start designing cans of beer for local breweries. He quickly moved to a much larger scale designing walls for Catawba Brewery and Divine Barrel. Here he shows the viewer the body of the snake but allows his snake to escape out of the frame of his mural. Does this heighten the awareness of this slithering snake or merely seem like a design decision? Or both?
Title:Mecklenburg Valve mural
Location: 2407 Central Avenue
Artist: Denton Burrows
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info:@dentonburrows
Story: Denton Burrows is based in Manhattan and is the co-founder of Dripped on the Road, a traveling artist residency program. He’s won numerous awards, painted all over the country (49 states) and is a public art entrepreneur.
Key Formal Elements:
The original composition for Talking Walls are the three profile views of a figure. Each is made up shapes of colors against the black background. Organic and flowing, it brings to mind the Renaissance painter Giuseppe Archimboldo’s style of creating portraits with shapes of fruit. Just a little art history… Fun fact: the owners of Mecklenburg Valve liked his mural so much that they commissioned him to come back and paint the rest of the wall.
Title: “Scorpio”
Location: 1300 Central Avenue
Artist: Senkoe
Date: 2023
Media: Spray paint
Artist Info: @senkowone
Story: Our Charlotte mural festival, Talking Walls, sponsored this mural at Moo & Brew. Talking Walls is an annual mural festival bringing regional, national, and international artists to Charlotte for one week to paint murals and beautify our city. Senkoe is a Mexican artist that works internationally. His work explores identity and is grounded in his study of graphics, mysticism, and culture.
Key Formal Elements:
Scorpions are full of symbolic meanings, and you can get lost down a rabbit hole with that query. Perhaps here the artist is exploring some of those meanings but also delighting in playing with the fun graphics which make this scorpion less threatening.
FUN FACT: Both butterflies and scorpions have a skeleton on the exterior of their body.
Title: La muerte chiquita
Location: 1300 Central Avenue
Artists: Senkoe and Arko
Date: 2023
Media: Spray paint
Artist Info: @senkowone, @arkoclt
Story: This was the second wall sponsored by Talking Walls and it was really planned but makes a great addition. Talking Walls is an annual mural festival bringing regional, national, and international artists to Charlotte for one week to paint murals and beautify our city. Senkoe is a Mexican artist that works internationally. His work explores identity and is grounded in his study of graphics, mysticism, and culture. Arko is a local artist, founder of Talking Walls and the tow artists collaborated on this mural.
Key Formal Elements:
When Senkoe finished up his mural a couple of days early, it made sense to paint another mural. Local artist Arko stepped in for the collab and there are elements of both artist’s styles to explore. Arko added his distinctive border design and his Xs in the center. The skull, a symbol of death, often also connects to the power of life and here the beauty of the birds, patterns, colors, and graphics all create a dynamic composition.
Location: 1300 Central Avenue
Artist: Tucker Sward
Date: 2019
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @t.v.c.k
Story: Local artist Tucker Sward painted this mural for Talking Walls 2019. Sward, who studied at UNCC and apprenticed with muralists duo Matt Hooker and Matt Moore, is also a tattoo artist. His recent works include murals at Camp North End and Myers Park Baptist Church.
Key Formal Elements:
Sward suggests a sense of wonder and discovery with this portrait of his sister staring intently at a white ball of light mysteriously escaping her hand. Use of a black and white value scale contrasted with the unusual colors may suggest two realities. Perhaps the white sphere symbolizes the blank canvas of an artist or the blank canvas of our lives. The colorful bolts could be a metaphor for imagination.
Location: 927 Central Avenue
Artists: Alex DeLarge, Dustin Moates, Southern Tiger Collective
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artists Info: @alxdlrg, @dstnmts, @southerntigercollective
Story: Both Alex DeLarge and Dustin Moates are artists in the Charlotte mural scene. DeLarge was one of the original founders of the TalkingWalls Mural Festival in 2018 and DeLarge and Moates founded the Southern Tiger Collective, a cooperative group of local artists supporting our street art scene.
Key Formal Elements:
Marvel Comics fan? Why yes. If so maybe you recognize Thanos, the villain from Avengers Infinity War. Thanos wears the metal glove called the Infinity Gauntlet with the different Infinity stones in it. If he collects all of the stones, he has the power to rule the galaxy. Cool.
Location: 927 Central Avenue
Artist: Jeks
Date: 2018
Media: Acrylic paint
Artist Info: @jeks_nc
Story: Greensboro-based Jeks painted this mural for Talking Walls 2018, the city-wide mural festival. Jeks is a graffiti artist, street artist, and muralist known for his hyperrealist portraits.
Key Formal Elements:
The skull is a common vanitas symbol. It also looks pretty cool. A vanitas painting has objects that are symbolic of the certainty of death and remind the viewer of the fleeting quality of our lives. But the sensuous surface quality of the skull draws us into its beauty.
Title: “The Way of Water”
Location: 1115 N. Brevard St.
Artist: Brandon Sadler
Date: 2023
Media: Spray Paint
Artist Info: @risingredlotus
Story: Our Charlotte mural festival, Talking Walls, sponsored this mural along the support wall of the light rail train. Talking Walls is an annual mural festival bringing regional, national, and international artists to Charlotte for one week to paint murals and beautify our city. Brandon Sadler is an Atlanta-based artist known for his murals, illustration work, and explorations around identity, graphic design, and calligraphy.
Key Formal Elements:
In a perfect pairing of location and artist, Sadler creates a meditation on “Flow” and movement and if you are lucky, you may see a light rail car pass by on the tracks. In a nod to an important and popular Chinese woodcut, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” Sadler’s mural flows from the tallest part of the support to the smallest in a series of waves.
** Get close enough to check out the texture of this wall and then give the artist virtual fist bump for painting so painstakingly on this rough surface.
Title: "Treasure Keeper"
Location: 1016 N. Davidson Street
Artist: Wingchow
Date: 2023
Media: Aerosol paint
Artist Info: @wingchow
Story: Our Charlotte mural festival, Talking Walls, sponsored this mural on the side wall of Birdsong Brewery. Talking Walls is an annual mural festival bringing regional, national, and international artists to Charlotte for one week to paint murals and beautify our city. Wing Chow is a muralist and artist with strong roots in Richmond, Virginia and is now based in Washington, DC. Her signature abstract forms are usually playful, colorful and create a dynamic setting for your imagination to explore.
Key Formal Elements:
Wingchow’s signature abstract bubble forms take up space on the left side of this mural while the artist makes a connection to the business location, Birdsong Brewery, on the right side of the mural. Consider the obstacles of this wall with a ramp, loading dock door, vents, and dumpster, and then consider how skillfully the artist arranges her composition to work with the wall. The painting of the dumpster was a last-minute decision shortly before the artist left for the airport, but it completes the mural!
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