Spaceworks Announces Two New Murals in Downtown Tacoma
In progress now, official debut April 17th 2014, on display through August 2014
Artists Chelsea O’Sullivan and Diana Leigh Surma have been commissioned by Spaceworks to create murals that will bring life to the longstanding vacant building at the corner of South 11th and Market Street. Their efforts will activate the intersection, prevent vandalism, and inspire creativity in our community.
Chelsea O’ Sullivan has worked on numerous murals across Tacoma, and last summer completed a beautiful mural on the Tacoma Buddhist Temple as part of the Tacoma Murals Project. For Spaceworks she is taking on a series of 10 large panels running down South 11th Street. The piece is titled “Turn on Spring” to which she states “Early spring in Tacoma can be a little gray. It rains, a lot. It is chilly. Driving into town is always beautiful but where the city skyline meets with the clouds, they share the same hue and fade into one another. My goal is to capture the beauty that lives in this gray world and explode some color into it.”
On Market Street, artist Diana Leigh Surma has been inviting volunteers and students to join in on the creation of her mural titled “Show Your Stripes.” In describing this intricately laid out design of geometric shapes Diana comments that this project “celebrates the revitalization of Tacoma’s bustling downtown corridor and encourages youth participation in the arts. The design incorporates bold colors and overlapping planes that stretch across the mural’s surface to create a unified composition. Like the networks of shapes that shift before the viewer’s eyes Tacoma is a city constantly transforming and reinventing itself. However, the roots of its history and traditions, its stripes, stand to remind us of what came before.”
These new murals are part of the 11th round of Artscapes exhibitions brought to you by Spaceworks Tacoma. Over the course of the program vacant storefronts throughout downtown Tacoma have been filled with 84 large scale exhibits, including art installations, murals, and videos.
The last round of Artscapes applications was reviewed in October by a talented and devoted selection panel of: Kyle Dillehay, Art Instructor at Tacoma Community College; Dane Meyer, Dane Gregory Meyer Photography and Tacoma Arts Commissioner; Naomi Strom-Avila, Cultural Arts Specialist for the Tacoma Arts Program; and Frank Terrill, Artifact Restorer and Senior Engineer at the Tacoma Planning & Development Services Division.
Over the course of the program Spaceworks has partnered with University of Washington Tacoma, AT & T, Power Property Consultants, A Street Associates LLC, Paul Okner, The Marie T. Wilson Trust, Bristol Equities, Steve Shaub, Pioneer Health Services, LinMar Managerment, Lee Noble,Tim Johnson, The Chambers Family, George and Al Howe, Neil Walter Company, Eric Cedarstrand, Simon & Johnson LLC, Seven Seventeen Investors LLC., and has received funding from the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber, the City of Tacoma, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for the Arts and Ovation TV.
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