A guided tour of Chattanooga’s history in murals
What was once known as “The Armpit Of The South” is well on its way to becoming the Belle of the Ball. For more than 30 years, Chattanooga has been in the midst of a citywide revitalization effort that is effectively transforming an industrial town into a destination city and outdoor hotspot.
A vital part of this effort is the introduction of murals to public and commercial spaces—an ongoing series of projects that is gaining momentum with every passing day.
Local painter J.W. Butts is responsible for a number of iconic local murals. He understands how his colorful works, and those of other muralists, affect the soul of the city.
“The effect a mural can have on a city is that it brings people out of the mundane—it might awaken someone out of the robotic state of a day-to-day routine,” he says. “It can inspire people and also attract people to a certain destination. As a business, it can help you stand out and grab people’s attention, and pique their interest.”
Murals are springing up in Highland Park, Glass Street, Brainerd…wherever you can walk or drive in the city, you can probably see a mural. Even utility boxes have paintings these days. But we rarely put faces or names to murals the way we do studio art. Let’s take a tour of the city and its environs and hear the voices, so to speak, behind the paint.
Early Murals: McCallie Walls Mural Project
Muralist Kevin Bate was the primary facilitator of the McCallie Walls Mural Project. “I don’t claim that it was just the murals that did this, but when I first moved to Highland Park in 2005, it was considered to be a bad part of town,” he says. “The drive down McCallie Ave could be depressing—driving through an area where urban decay had set in, and most buildings were abandoned and run down.”
The McCallie Walls Mural Project organizers wanted people to slow down and see the beauty of the neighborhood, “to maybe get out of their cars and look at the murals, and see that there are cool houses and neat storefronts,” Bate says. “Since we did that, there has been a change in people’s perception of the area. There were many factors that contributed to the improvements in Highland Park, and I would like to think that the murals were part of it.”
Mural art changes more than just surface appearance, Bate says.
“Mural art doesn’t just change the way a building looks, it changes the way people feel about the building,” he says. “If there is a big monolithic box building with no windows and a drab paint job, most people won’t like it. Put a mural on there, and it is no longer this big block—now it is a canvas for something they really like. We are taking something without a lot of aesthetic appeal and transforming it into something beautiful.”
An Artists’ Community: Glass Street
This sentiment is shared by Shaun LaRose, a local muralist who is known for his work with the Glass Street Mural. LaRose is in the process of co-founding a muralist cooperative in Chattanooga that aims to curate and elevate work by national, regional, and local muralists, and to create a yearly event called the Cross Hatch Mural Festival.
This muralist cooperative will seek to match businesses and sponsors with artists to facilitate new works in public spaces. They will also ensure mural quality, organize touch-ups, and help the artists to avoid issues like not complying with city ordinances, as was the case with the infamous Donut Mural in 2014.
An instructor at Chattanooga Christian School, LaRose tells us, “Before I was teaching, I was doing artwork full time and painting murals. What I have wanted to do since then is to empower other muralists to make work, and to find resources to support the artists, and elevate the work.”
Bate adds, “There are lots of artists in town doing murals—I think it is awesome, and I would like to see more. We’re especially suited for murals—we have so many industrial buildings, giant walls with no windows, huge spaces for us to put something pretty on. We’re lucky to have the situation we have here in Chattanooga; it lends itself towards murals.”
An Enormous Landmark: The AT&T Building
Bate continues, “I want to find a way to start doing gigantic pieces on the buildings downtown; there are big walls everywhere. All of these people have been doing murals of a certain size; I think we could start doing pieces like Meg Saligman, who came into town to do the AT&T Building.”
At the time it was completed, the AT&T mural was the largest in the country; it’s visible from Lookout Mountain. It was spearheaded by Philadelphia muralist Meg Saligman, who hired a crew of local artists to complete the work.
LaRose explains, “Part of the concept of the AT&T mural was to bring Saligman here to train local artists, and for them to make work after that—unfortunately, we haven’t had many opportunities for the artists who worked on that crew to make murals after that.”
Mercedes Llanos is one of these artists, and though she has only done one mural locally since working on the AT&T mural, her experience with that project has led her to opportunities in other cities.
“The AT&T project was fun, but also difficult,” she says. “A lot of hard work, and learning that painting murals is more about physical labor than anything else. This was six months of hard work from sunrise to sunset.”
Since working on the AT&T Building, she has painted in Argentina, Chile, Minnesota, and is currently in New York City. She paints both for non-profits and commercial companies, and is working on her MFA at Hunter College in NY. She says, “During the summer I was lucky to help paint a mural on a water tower in the Bowery for renowned street artist Shepard Fairey.”
Enchanted Interiors: Wayne-O-Rama and InsideOut Land
Finding success elsewhere is a hope for many artists who choose to leave Chattanooga. LaRose explains, saying “Our local artists are generally not getting the opportunities that national artists get through public art, because the selection committees are bound by bylaws where they can’t favor or earmark projects for local artists. Local businesses are still finding artists from other cities to come here and do the work.”
For the artists who choose to stay, LaRose’s cooperative and growing interest in local arts is providing hope for the future. Last year, Wayne White showed the local art community a bevy of new ideas with Wayne-O-Rama, and some locals are following in his footsteps.
A prime example of this is Butts, who is currently operating an immersive installation at Hamilton Place Mall that is as unique and entertaining as White’s year-long exhibit on the South Side. Entitled InsideOut Land, it might best be described as a psychedelic Chattanooga Nature Center—imagine Disney-meets-Joe Rogan at the mall.
Butts tells us, “InsideOut Land was an ambitious undertaking. It’s interesting how it has been received—I think Chattanooga has a ways to go as far as really accepting some things that are being prized in other parts of the country, in the art world. We have a chance to be real pioneers here, and that is empowering, scary, and a lot of fun.”
Education, History, and More
Kat Morris has been painting murals since 1973, and does everything from graphics and lettering to photo-realistic images. This week, it is especially relevant that she painted a mural in East Brainerd at the Great American Filling Station to commemorate the 9/11 tragedy.
In addition to other commercial projects like the Car Barn and Southside Social, Morris has painted many murals in public schools—more than 100 murals in Catoosa County alone. She says, “The schools spend money on murals because they value the results, and what it means to the students and the parents. The kids are encouraged to stay and learn in the space by the colorful art.”
The importance of murals in scholastic environments hasn’t gone unnoticed by Kevin Bate—he recently installed a mural at Dalton State College, and just signed a contract for a mural at UTC, a project that will begin in the next few weeks. He is also interested in educating, saying “I would be interested in doing something through the Chattery, teaching a class on painting murals, so that people don’t make the same mistakes I did. I want to get a lot more artists interested in painting murals.”
And That’s Just the Beginning
“Murals change cities,” say Llanos, “they change people. You can get up on a gloomy day and see all gray all around you, and how will you feel? Gray. Think about getting up on a gloomy gray morning, but when you leave your house those ugly gray buildings are colorful pieces of art. Your day changes. Murals bring hope to communities, and most importantly, they make art accessible to all, not just the elite. Muralism is art for the working class, and that’s something we should never forget.”
Though there has been much progress, the transformative power of murals is only just beginning to affect Chattanooga—there is a long and joyous undertaking ahead for local muralists.
LaRose says, “I want to see more diversity in our local work. We have a lot of the same kind of murals in Chattanooga, so I’m really excited to get more people making work, get more people into town making new things, and really challenge our aesthetic as a city, maybe with more murals that are focused on design, color, and pattern. I’m excited to see the murals diversify.”
“There are people here who have the talent and knowledge to do large projects,” Bate says. “Let’s start doing these large projects, and getting Chattanooga noticed for more large masterpieces in its downtown area.”