Artists behind this festival want to make city a mural destination

For Charlotte artist Arko, a spiraling and destructive drinking problem segued into fashioning colorful street art he often gives away.

“ ‘Arko’ came from a crisis in my life. I was an alcoholic,” said the turquoise-masked artist. “Putting a stop to that destructive activity (five years ago) opened up so much of my time. I hadn’t realized how much I invested in that garbage.”

When he quit, he was hurting, “but I knew that what was going to come of this choice was a good thing. … I wanted to share that message.”

As did his partner, whom he credits with the motivation to stop drinking.

“I became aggressive toward her one time and at that point she said, ‘I’m done.’ She said, ‘You can take your pick: You can have your drinks or you can have me.’

“Easiest decision I made,” he said.

He’d done street art and graffiti before, he says; she had done some. But his quitting alcohol was when the two decided to “go hard” at the form, as he puts it – hard, and in character.

She is Owl.

That’s one of the personal stories behind Talking Walls, a public art and mural festival happening across the city Oct. 10-13.

Mike Wirth, an associate professor at Queens University and member of Southern Tiger Collective and the all-volunteer group of festival organizers, said the intent is simple: Help the public art scene grow.

“We wanted to create an event that could be the catalyst for establishing city as a mural arts destination, similar to cities such as Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles.

“Our thought is we keep building that presence, that growth we’ve seen in other cities we love to visit,” he said. “Charlotte is way behind in that sense.”

Wirth and buddy Kevin Taylor, another organizer, said they pushed their creative work to the side for 10 months to make Talking Walls a reality. “You do all this work to make painting easy and then you can’t do it,” said Wirth. “(But) in order for this to work it has to be organized by artists.”

“None of us wanted to do all the work, but it needed to happen,” said Taylor. “We’ve heard people complain about the street art scene here for quite some time. So our aim was to make it easy for the artists to come here, easy for the public to see their work and put Charlotte on the map.”

Owl echoed that: “We want to show people there are different ways to approach marking up walls,” she said. “We’re coming in and giving the community an education on what street art is and how impactful it is around the world.”

Other Charlotte artists who’ll paint walls for the festival include Obso, a local pioneer in the graffiti and street art scene; Winston Salem State University grad Georgia Nakima, whose work focuses on African and Indigenous diaspora while highlighting nature and biodiversity; hyper-realist artist Nick Napoletano; and BLKMRKTCLT art gallery and photography studio co-owner Dammit Wesley, who said he uses his work to break down barriers that cause creatives of color to operate in bubbles.

Artists coming from elsewhere include Trasher of Mexico City, Hoxxoh of Miami, McMonster of Portland, Denton Burrows of New York and Ramiro Davaro-Comas of Brooklyn.

This story was originally published October 5, 2018 at 11:27 AM.