What does the future hold for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural on Tryon Street?

In a little less than two weeks, the Black Lives Matter mural was dreamed up, painted, defaced and now repainted.

On June 5, Taiwo Jaiyeoba, assistant city manager and director of planning, design and development, tweeted: “… imagine for a few minutes that we can ‘art-ify’ the intersection of Trade and Tryon with ‘Black Lives Matter!’ And leave it in that space for 2 weeks. Wouldn’t that send a strong message?!”

The next day Charlotte Is Creative tweeted back with a simple question: “What can we do to make this happen?”

Jaiyeoba’s dream quickly turned into a reality. With collaboration between the City of Charlotte, Charlotte Is Creative, Brand The Moth, BlkMrktClt, more than 17 individual artists and a supportive citizen base, “Black Lives Matter” reads across South Tryon Street in different colors and designs.

Now, instead of a temporary two-week stint, the mural is here to stay.

Next steps

After tire marks were discovered on the mural last Friday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department launched an investigation to identify the driver responsible. They are gathering intelligence and reviewing traffic camera footage, said CMPD spokesman Thomas Hildebrand.

Hildebrand said the department is currently pursuing multiple leads and cannot identify any individual involved in the investigation until a suspect is formally charged.

CMPD asks community members to report any information they may have about the incident. There is an award of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest, through the Charlotte Crime Stoppers program.

Although no suspect has been charged, the mural artists have finished repairing their work and have plans to protect it from other vandalism attempts.

A clear coat will be painted to seal the mural on South Tryon and prevent future defacement. The sealant was made possible by donations.

The material they will use to seal the mural is VandlGuard Two Part Urethane Anti-Graffiti Mural Protection, said Sam Guzzie, executive director of Brand The Moth. The product is anti-graffiti, weatherproof and has a five-year warranty, Guzzie said.

“If the street opens up again and somebody decides to peel out on it, a street cleaner can just wipe it all off,” Guzzie said.

The Charlotte Department of Transportation coordinated the closure of Tryon Street on Tuesday, June 9, as artists worked on the mural. The street was reopened after the mural’s completion, but the City of Charlotte announced on Friday that it will be temporarily closed to vehicles for the safety of pedestrians admiring the artwork. The city has not yet set a date to reopen the street, according to Department of Transportation spokeswoman Brittany Clampitt.

The art will likely remain on the pavement for at least another year or more, according to the Department of Transportation.

“The mural will remain in place until the street is resurfaced,” Clampitt wrote in an email correspondence, “but the Charlotte Department of Transportation does not have plans to resurface Tryon Street in Uptown this year.”

It will likely be a few years until the Department of Transportation considers resurfacing Tryon Street, Clampitt said. Plans for resurfacing a street in Charlotte depend on weather, damage, and other unforeseen circumstances. Based on the current condition of the pavement on Tryon, Clampitt does not believe resurfacing will be needed any time soon.

Behind the scenes of how we got here

One hurdle that organizers of this project had to face was policy. According to the City of Charlotte’s Paint the Pavement manual from 2017, “no words, logos, commercial speech or advertising are allowed” on streetscapes.

Clampitt said city ordinances generally do not allow signs to be painted on public rights-of-way, but there is an exemption in Section 10-141(e)6 permitting “signs established by governmental agencies.”

The mural was funded by savings from the city’s budget for the Placemaking Program for fiscal year 2020, Clampitt said. The Placemaking Program is an initiative of the City’s Urban Design Center to turn public areas into vibrant community spaces.

The organizers also had to bring together 17 artists in less than a week.

“This was about three months of work packed into three days,” Guzzie said.

Throughout the process of painting, repainting and soon sealing the mural, the artists have grown close. In a group chat, Dammit Wesley, co-founder of BlkMrktClt and artist behind the “B,” said one of the artists texted: “Oh my god, this is what the Power Rangers feel like when they are assembling.”

“We are like the Power Rangers right now,” Wesley said. “We’re saving the world in the best way that we know how to, to the best of our abilities.”

‘A visual representation of hate’

When the mural was defaced on the morning of June 12, two days after it was painted, Wesley said he wasn’t surprised. “I was honestly shocked that it wasn’t defaced the first night we were done.”

The first day of painting, the road was blocked off by Department of Transportation trucks, Wesley said. There was no police presence at the first painting of the mural, Wesley said.

That night, there were no barricades or cars blocking the artwork.

“I can honestly say I was a little upset with the city for not having the foresight to even keep barricades up and properly seal the mural to begin with,” Wesley said.

But Wesley said protesters came to South Tryon and blocked traffic. “We didn’t ask for that – that’s just the people of Charlotte wanting to protect what was theirs, and that was public art,” Wesley said.

When the artists reconvened to touch up the mural after its defacement, Wesley said some artists adjusted their designs to incorporate the tire marks into the design. “I think it was something that was needed. I think people need to have a visual representation of the hate that exists.”

‘Simply a call to action’

The purpose of the project was to give artists the space to share their form of protest. “This is our chant,” Wesley said.

Wesley said when people ask what street art does for reform, he answers: “Sometimes we just need a morale booster, sometimes we need to assemble, sometimes we need something to rally behind.”

“This was our way of highlighting the importance of not only black lives mattering but our way of bringing acknowledgment to the fact that if we are capable of defunding Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s police department, that will free up more resources for us to continue to do things like this,” Wesley said.

But this is only the beginning, Guzzie said. “It is not an end result of anything, it is simply a call to action.”

Charlotte Is Creative co-founder Tim Miner said his goal now is to continue to offer support to artists and muralists in their future endeavors.

“The people that put themselves at the service of this message last week, we want them to continue to thrive and have great careers in Charlotte moving forward,” Miner said.

Charlotte Is Creative featured an article on its website that highlights all the artists behind the mural, the message behind their work and ways to support them.

The future of Tryon Street

On South Tryon Street, there are at least two markers tied to the Confederacy, according to the Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina project at UNC-Chapel Hill. One is located at the intersection of South Tryon and Fourth Street. Sharing this space: the Black Lives Matter mural and graffiti depicting messages of hope along boarded-up windows.

Mission-based nonprofit Charlotte Center City Partners is working with local officials, city planners and uptown businesses to imagine a new future for Tryon Street inspired by the mural. Charlotte Center City Partners believes Tryon can serve as a focal point for a diverse Charlotte community, contributing to Uptown both economically and culturally, CEO Michael Smith said.

The Tryon Street project is still in its early pilot stages, Smith said. Smith said he and his partners are taking things one step at a time, and currently there are no plans to reopen the street.

Smith applauds the effort and teamwork of the city and the artists for creating a groundbreaking work of art, he said. “I’ve been in Charlotte now for a long time, and I love how unexpected it is, how authentic, how flexible. This mural offers broader ownership of Uptown. This is our commons,” he said.

Allowing Tryon to serve the community and function as an important part of the Uptown grid will take a lot of coordination, Smith said. As those working on this project begin to develop ideas, Smith knows it will be worth it.

“It’s an unmatched opportunity to allow our center city to become a warmer, more welcoming place,” he said, “We love the way this is testing some radical, placemaking initiatives. We want to rethink Tryon Street and think about what it needs to become over time.”

Georgie Nakima, the artist behind the “M,” said she hopes the mural serves as a cultural marker for Charlotte. “I hope that it becomes a safe space for people to just be people in that concrete jungle of downtown Charlotte,” Nakima said.

“There’s a tribe of people who are willing to put in the sweat and the labor to see it happen,” Nakima said. “And that’s kind of like the symbolic display that you can see through the art being defaced and people coming back out to fix it.”

“I kind of hope it doesn’t stay a mural,” Wesley said. “I hope that the mural in its current form encourages and inspires the city to build upon it.”