We featured the mud stencils of Milwaukee artist Jesse Graves in the November-December 2009 issue of Utne Reader:

There are no laws against playing in the dirt, the messages are no less powerful than those from a can of paint, and if the neighbors don’t like it—well, they can just apply water. The technique is also non­toxic, an eco-advantage those hauling aerosol cans down alleys or atop buildings can’t claim.

Graves was generous enough to let us share a few photos of his work and the group stenciling he's done on issues of environmental plunder and the criminal justice system. Enjoy!

The state mental hospitals of the 19th and early 20th centuries—originally known as “lunatic asylums”—often operated within massive, majestic buildings, most of which are now abandoned or operating at a fraction of their former capacity. Christopher Payne spent several years meticulously photographing 70 of these architectural marvels, and his haunting images are collected in the beautiful new book Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, just out on MIT Press.

“For more than half the nation’s history,” Payne writes, “vast mental hospitals were prominent architectural features on the American landscape. Practically every state could claim to have at least one.”

The location of the hospitals, in the countryside, away from the city, afforded ample privacy and an abundance of land for farming and gardening, which were integral to the patients’ daily regimen of exercise. . . . The grounds provided relief from the indoor sights and sounds of the asylum and also served as a dramatic setting for the buildings, enhancing their grandeur. As visitors to the asylums never penetrated beyond the public lobbies of the administration buildings, it was these spaces and the landscapes that acted as the chief agents of propaganda to exert a positive influence on public perception.

Neurologist-writer Oliver Sacks, who worked for 25 years at Bronx State Hospital (now Bronx Psychiatric Center), pens the book’s introduction, a lively tour through the history of these asylums’ philosophies, inner workings, and patient populations as they shifted over the years.

Source: Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

Images copyright © Christopher Payne.

Two years ago, visual artist Collin Sekajugo established an arts center where there weren’t any before: Kigali, Rwanda. The Ivuka Arts Center (ivuka means “rebirth”) provides studio space and workshops, and helps artists “make a living from their art,” Sekajugo tells Peace Review—no easy feat in a country that doesn’t have any art supplies shops or galleries. “We mostly exhibit our art in public buildings, in hotels or in coffee shops—in places where foreigners may go,” Sekajugo says.

Perhaps most surprising is that 15 years after the genocide, Ivuka’s artists tend to avoid the subject. Here’s Sekajugo’s explanation:

Some of our artists address genocide in some works. Most of them don’t though. Some of our artists are genocide survivors, you see. Developing art about the genocide is very hard for them. It’s difficult for viewers too. It elicits bad feelings, feelings of pain, grief, or guilt. Who were the culprits? Or the victims? It creates division. Rather than representing genocide, the artists here would rather paint about reconciliation.

I suppose, if you wanted to, you could read genocide themes into their works. For instance, you could read genocide into this painting of people fleeing. Or you could relate the red color in this abstract painting to blood. Painting directly about genocide is delicate, however. It discourages people from coming to terms with the genocide, from reconciling. People here are very sensitive to these issues and emotions are very raw, especially during commemoration time.

I have a lot of ideas about the genocide that I’d like to put on canvas, but then I think of the repercussions, of how people are going to view it, of how it’s going to affect them. Some people might respond well to it, but others might become emotional, bitter, or angry. Genocide is still a very sensitive subject here, perhaps too sensitive.

The Peace Review interview is not available online, but if you’re at all interested in Rwanda, go out and buy the whole issue (July-September 2009)—it’s packed with essays and reports from that country, and Sekajugo’s interview is just one in a series of chats with artists working on amazing, inspiring projects in post-genocide Rwanda.

Source: Peace Review 

Image courtesy of Collin Sekajugo.

The pedestrian reclamation of Times Square in New York City is a good start for the sake of public art, according to Benjamin R. Barber in the Nation. But it’s not enough. To transform the once traffic clogged area into something that can truly be considered “public,” the city must enlist artists, and secure adequate funding. He writes:

Public space is not merely the passive residue of a decision to ban cars or a tacit invitation to the public to step into the street. It must be actively created and self-consciously sustained against the grain of an architecture built as much for machines as people, more for commercial than common use.

Barber points to Chicago’s Millennium Park and Barcelona’s Las Ramblas (with all of its grit) as places that got public art right. New York has the same potential with Times Square, but it’s not there yet.

Source:  The Nation  

Image by  Falling Heavens , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Some people can’t see a place without wanting to sketch it out on paper. The Urban Sketchers, a group of artists founded by Gabriel Campanario, share their visions of the world on their Flickr group and on the blog. The loose affiliations of the artists create a site where pen-and-ink drawings of Madrid will sit comfortably next to watercolor drawings of rural America. Their manifesto states that all of the drawings are made on-site as a truthful representation of what they see. The group recently released a magazine on the self-publishing site Issuu.com, and the first issue is all about cars in cities around the world.  The idiosyncrasies of the artists, with their various styles, media, and subjects, make the issue a beautiful and compelling read.

Source: The Urban Sketchers 

A German environmental organization called Oro Verde produced this knockoff on naturalist illustrations. The message here, if you didn’t catch it when it hit you over the head, is stated explicitly

The destruction of the rainforest comes in many shapes. And there are all kinds of animal and plant species which suffer as a result. Every hour three different types of animal and plant life are made extinct. Help us to save the rainforest: www.oroverde.de

The blog No Caption Needed has posted a large image of the poster, called Diversity of Species in the Rainforest.

(Thanks Eyeteeth, No Caption Needed.)