Graffiti veterans go after the big picture

City sponsors street artists to paint giant mural at Central Library

By ALLAN TURNER HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Dec. 18, 2010, 9:05AM

Once secretive and vaguely menacing but now active in advertising and local classrooms, Houston's leading graffiti artists are pushing for greater public acceptance with their first city-sponsored project — a 20,000-square-foot, $30,000 mural in downtown's Central Library parking garage.

The seemingly strange meeting of outsider art and municipal bureaucracy is being played out in the fluorescent-lit underground garage as spray masters Gonzo247 and MERGE360 employ a palette of custom-designed paints to interpret the library's theme, "Linking You to the World."

In coming weeks, the artists - men in their late 30s who have sprayed graffiti since adolescence - will create images of Earth's continents filled with portraits of indigenous peoples and connected by a trail of paint splatter. The painting will be completed next month.

To the artists and their assistants, who work early mornings, late nights and days on which the library is closed, the project represents a new level of public acceptance - vindication for years of practicing an art scorned by proper society.

To Houston Public Library officials, it is another means of appealing to teens and young adults.

"Providing a way for these folks to express their creativity legally and legitimately is very harmonious with HLP's mission," said Wendy Heger, the library's assistant director for planning and facilities. "… We were lamenting the fact that, in our recent library renovation, we weren't able to make the parking garage look better. We just put two and two together: Here was this great art and here was this space that really needed enhancement."

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