Friday, August 30, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
50th anniversary of the March on Washington
The world's most talked about street artist commemorates the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington
JR faces Atlanta
About a dozen people have gathered at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Hilliard Street in Old Fourth Ward to watch today's most talked about street artist put up a mural. JR, as the Parisian artist is known, climbs the frame of a three-story scaffold, maneuvering around its bars and through each landing's hatch like it's a jungle gym. JR's preferred medium is wheatpaste, essentially gluing a paper image to a wall. His team of assistants follows one by one, quickly filling in the levels below him. The 30-foot-by-40-foot black-and-white photograph is unfurled in long strips, slowly revealing a trio of young men carrying signs, one of which says, "NO MORE HUNGER."
The image is a reproduction of a Steven Blum photograph from the Poor People's Campaign of 1968, a civil rights demonstration envisioned by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and realized shortly after King's death. A few hours later and a couple of blocks down the road at Edgewood Avenue and Hilliard Street, JR and his team begin swift work on a second mural. This one's a dramatic still from the 1963 March on Washington taken by Flip Schulke. The opportunity to commemorate this month's 50th anniversary of the march and MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech in the neighborhood where the civil rights hero grew up is what piqued JR's interest in Atlanta, and ultimately helped Living Walls get him here
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