Why murals matter in the city of Erie

(WJET/WFXP/YourErie.com) — Pablo Picasso reportedly said, “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.” The line is a commentary on the skill of an artist who isn’t just painting, but rather bringing their paintings to life, but the same quote applied to Erie describes artists who are using yellow paint to bring a little brightness into neighborhoods through murals.

Many of the recent murals are part of a project led by Erie Arts and Culture that will see 50 murals completed by the end of 2023. Already, there are more than a dozen murals in Erie neighborhoods that have been commissioned by Erie Arts and Culture.

“We’ve commissioned 13 murals over the last four months — they’re not the only murals that exist, and they’re also not the only public art that’s been commissioned,” said Patrick Fisher, executive director of Erie Arts and Culture. The murals, all 50 of them when they’re complete, are part of a grander vision for Erie. “This is a really exciting opportunity, this present renaissance in Erie, as we think about becoming the vision of ourselves that we all hope to be. It takes investments in our social services, and it takes investments in our public education. Art seems like a luxury or an add-on, but I think art is front and center as most important. Public art reinforces the emotional connection.”

There is a vision for the city of Erie. That vision is taking shape in the headlines — older buildings are set to receive new life, and brownfield sites could become facilities that employ some 250 people. Still, Erie lives in the shadows of its own past, evident as one drives down 12th Street.

“When I was a kid, 12th Street was the busiest street. You could get up to five good, family-sustaining jobs just by walking up and down the street – of course, all of that went away and those buildings have gotten into bad shape. It’s kind of been a depressing place to drive across now,” Erie Mayor Joe Schember said. “Now that’s changing. Some of the murals going up are helpful, and we have businesses moving in. And at 12^th and Cherry very soon, the bad part of that big building there will be taken down and what’s left will be renovated and new things will be added.

“There are very exciting things going on. It’s going to take years, but it’s very exciting.”

The plan for 50 murals is targeted. They’re not going up on facades at random. Before the mural project started, Erie Arts and Culture partnered with United Way of Erie County. They, and other partners, studied the walking routes of the five community schools within the city of Erie. They learned that “safety concerns” was the number-one cause of absenteeism at the schools. Lending to those safety concerns were properties deemed to be in disrepair, assessed by the city as being either “poor” or “unsound.” According to the study, each of the schools had more than 12.5% of its neighboring properties in disrepair within a 1.5 mile radius of the school. Two of the schools had more than 25% of their neighboring properties in disrepair.

“In addition, the kids are walking in areas where they’re subjected to predatory advertisements for things like payday lending, bail bonds, alcohol and tobacco,” Fisher said. “These murals are intended to balance out the visual narrative and landscape by creating a bright visual — they’re not intended to resolve concerns of safety, but instead they create a welcoming environment.”

Fisher said he personally spent time at the mural sites while work was underway. During his time at the sites, he received positive public feedback by passing neighbors. Mayor Schember had positive feedback for the murals as well.

“It’s really neat that instead of seeing a blank wall, you can now see a mural. A lot of these murals mean something, and they’re very touching if you have a chance to look at them and spend a little time with them as well,” Schember said. “I think this is a great thing, and we’re going to see more and more of this happening because Erie Arts and Culture is doing a lot in this area.”

The murals vary in scale — one is the whole side of a midrise, another is a detached multi-vehicle garage, and one is even just the windows of an unused, brick building.

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An artist

It’s a busy road. Cars pass with music blaring from the open windows, horns are honking, a block away a police car blows through the intersection with lights on. It’s also a residential neighborhood, with a laundromat and a food market on the corner.

At the other end of the block is a small pub, a Pepsi sign hanging over the sidewalk. Across the street (Ash Street) is the side of an old, red brick building. Metal fire escapes zig-zag down to the top of the first floor. The windows are boarded, and until recently they were painted a deep red, nearly matching the color of the brick.

Now, the boarded windows each sport a painting, each painting is a part of the whole. In panels, an older woman raises her arms, and with her arms, the sun rises on the horizon. Birds take to the sky. A pair of youth are surrounded by the evening sky and stars, but they look to the windows above where the sun already is warming the sky in bright colors.

“She is a trusted adult figure, and while her arms are open to raise the sun, they’re also open to embrace the children,” Sarah Jacobs said. Jacobs was the lead artist in the project. “Hopefully, the children who pass by the mural will encounter a trusted adult when they get to school.”

For each of the murals commissioned through Erie Arts and Culture, artists are asked to interact with the proposed mural’s neighbors to gather input before creating a design. Jacobs and Margarita Dangel, Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Network Eastside neighborhood coordinator, interviewed the neighbors.

“The people we talked to wanted something positive with bright colors,” Jacobs said. “They said their neighborhood is misunderstood — they’re hardworking families, but people think it’s a violent neighborhood.”

While Jacobs stood discussing the finished mural on a sunny day in early November, a woman and young child walked by. The child put out their hand, touching each of the paintings on the first floor. The woman gently scolded the child, but the child persisted, drawn in by the artwork – the colors, the texture. There’s a depth to the panels, and that too is intentional. Jacobs has lived in many places – she’s from the small Pennsylvania town of Littlestown, but she’s lived in New York City, London (she’s a naturalized citizen of Britain), and Pittsburgh – but she recently moved to Erie. Already, Erie’s natural landscape is having an impact on her.

“Since moving here, I’ve started to incorporate more deep space into my work. My art used to be flatter, but now I’m adding in distance,” Jacobs said. “Part of it from being out on Presque Isle and watching sunsets.”

Initially she had applied to work as an artist assistant on a mural project, but Patrick Fisher of Erie Arts and Culture convinced her to take on a lead role. Jacobs traditionally has worked on large canvasses using oil, but a mural seemed daunting. But this mural wasn’t being painted at the site, instead it was painted on individual panels that were then adhered to the boarded windows like wallpaper. While working within the confines of each window pane may seem akin to painting several smaller canvasses, each window completes a scene, and that created its own challenges.

“I was doing a lot of math for the arches between the windows. Because it was broken up, I couldn’t do a normal composition, so it was a design challenge,” Jacobs said. “I wouldn’t have come up with this design if it weren’t for that — I would have relied on my canvas compositions.”

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Neighbors

Less than a mile away, a black and white mural covers what used to be the bare wall of a warehouse. It’s Parade Street, a thoroughfare to downtown Erie. The cars pass faster and with more frequency here. The cars are on their way past, not to, the mural.

“How many of those cars drove by and nobody saw the mural?” Margarita Dangel wondered aloud. “A lot of murals have that problem, but talking about it changes that.”

The mural on Parade street is of community members. Not dignitaries or benefactors, but the actual community members of the neighborhood that the mural adorns. Ida Page is 72. She grew up nearby. She went to McKinley Elementary School as did her husband (they’ve been married now for 49 years). They moved out of Erie for 14 years, but then returned. Now there are waste transfer facilities just a few blocks away.

“There’s been a big change around here,” she said. When asked if the change was for the better or worse, she said worse. “It has a bad reputation, a bad name, but it’s home for us,” she added.

Jacobs’ mural on Ash Street features color and fictional characters who are representative of the people who live in that neighborhood. Here, on Parade Street at about East 18th Street, the mural is black and white. The people featured in the mural are actual people. It was painted from a photo, first drawn out on the building, then filled in by the artist. While many of the murals throughout the city are vibrant colors, Ida Page said she likes the black and white format.

“Black and white looks better to me. Some of the ones in color have funny looking heads. And this is how life seems — everything is black and white right now,” Page said.

Page is one of the neighbors featured in the mural. She said her kids were “tickled about it.” Her daughters took pictures of the mural, and Page said she wants to make Christmas cards out of the photos so she can send them to friends.

Ivette Vegas (“Like the city but without the money,” she said) also is featured in the mural. She grew up in the neighborhood, and now she can see the mural from her apartment.

“I can see myself from the window. It feels good,” Vegas said. “It’s something positive for the neighborhood. It just feels like it’s community.”

All of the neighbors agreed that the neighborhood has a negative reputation, but each of them seemed to have a passion for where they live. Mary Moore moved to Erie in 2015. She chose the Eastside.

“People asked why I was moving into that neighborhood — ‘It’s a bad neighborhood,’ they said. But I said all it takes is one nice person to move in, and then another nice person, and another nice person,” Moore said.

Moore commended the murals project that aims to have a mural along the walking routes of school children.

“That’s so awesome, and I hope it will bring out everybody’s imagination — maybe a child walking to school will see a butterfly in a mural, and then when they get into art class, they’ll be inspired to paint a butterfly,” she said.

Adem Husejnovic has lived in the United States since 1998 — all that time in Erie, and he’s been in the neighborhood (at the same address, even) for the past 22 years. He said he believes the neighborhood’s reputation is on the rebound.

“I don’t have a problem with my neighborhood — never have,” Husejnovic said. “It used to be a bad reputation, but like in the past 10 to 15 years, it’s started changing, and it’s getting better and better. There’s always some improvement going on.”

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Connecting

The neighbors were asked by JET 24/FOX 66 what the city could do to improve their neighborhood. Page said the city could work on condemned homes, and help residents to revitalize their homes. Vegas highlighted a similar issue, saying, “They could clean it up. They could put new things around here instead of all down by the dock.” Moore said the neighborhood needs brighter streets at night — “Especially on corners.” The lights that currently are there aren’t bright enough, she said. She highlighted the intersections of East 24th at Reed Street, and East 24th at Wayne Street.

Husejnovic said the city needs to do a better job of understanding the people in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is a combination of different cultures. Husejnovic said he knew of at least five different religions that were represented in the neighborhood. The mural taps into the neighborhood’s diversity, the neighbors agreed.

“It looks diverse to me…” Page said. “To me, we have the best mural in the city.”

Much of that feedback from the neighbors echoes what Dangel heard when she interviewed neighbors before the mural was painted. Dangel started working as the Eastside neighborhood coordinator 7 years ago. Then, there were tensions among the different cultures. Immigrants moving to Erie came to the Eastside because it was home to the International Institute of Erie which provided resources and services for immigrants. In addition to the tensions, there was a feeling of disconnect between the city and the neighborhood.

“The community felt neglected — there were improvements going on, but those improvements are along the Bayfront. Before that, even, they always felt like they were overlooked,” Dangel explained.

Dangel essentially serves as a community liaison.

“We always need bridges. I see my role as being a bridge from the east side to the west side of town,” she said.

It is intended that the mural will connect with the people of the neighborhood. In the case of the mural at Parade and East 18th Street, it’s a very little connection by featuring the faces of the community, but each of the murals are meant to represent the neighborhood where they’re painted (“If you feel like you had input on something, your attitude toward it changes — especially if you feel like you’ve been heard,” Dangel said). Another intent for the mural is to connect passing traffic to the neighborhood (“The cars just speed through the neighborhood. With the trees we’ve planted and the mural, maybe they’ll slow down and look, and maybe we can change the neighborhood’s image in a lot of people who don’t live here,” Dangel said).

Public art — including murals — connects people to a place, Patrick Fisher explained.

“Public art can be used to establish a beacon in the community, or a point of reflection in the community, and it can really be a thing from which a sense of community is built out and around,” Fisher said. “When most people think of Chicago, I think most people would think of ‘Cloud Gate,’ or ‘the Bean’ as it’s also known. That piece of art is synonymous with the city.”

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Impacts

Over the past four months, about $109,000 has gone to artists. They’re hired either as the lead artist or artist assistant for each project. More than 80% of those artists live and work in the Erie community, Fisher said.

And it’s not just the stipend that brings an economic boon to Erie. Equipment is being rented from local businesses, the paint is purchased locally, and the artists who are brought to town for the mural projects are “bringing their spending power” Fisher said. Additionally, the murals create a sense of artistic culture throughout the city, and that could tap into a cultural tourism industry that’s popular among the Millennial generation and other younger generations.

“According to the ‘Souls of Community’ study (a 2012 study published by the Knight Foundation), the number-one thing that contributes to an emotional bond between people and place is the aesthetics of place — the art, green spaces and parks,” Fisher said. “The more the emotional commitment is reinforced, the stronger the local GDP was. When Erie thinks of the new economy and how to be competitive in the new economy, it needs to think about our public art.”

Fisher said there was no direct connection, but he suggested there could be some connection between public art installations and development. The Dobbins Landing mural was followed by development, new hotels and seawalls. The Methodist Towers mural went up and within about 18 months the building across the street was purchased and redeveloped.

“I’m not saying our murals singlehandedly contributed to developments, but when you make an investment in an area, people start to think about the place or space differently,” Fisher said. “Some might find it silly to make investments in art when there are issues with homelessness and opioids, but we’re not taking money away from any of those issues — instead, hopefully we’re taking more money into our community.”

Time will tell what kind of economic boost, if any, the murals bring to Erie. For now, the paint is lifting the spirits of some of the neighbors.

“I’m praying it sends a message that we are a very peaceful and loving group, and that our arms are open to welcome everybody in,” Moore said.