YOU CAN SEE THIS MURAL BY THE ACIDUM PROJECT MURAL IN THE ALLEY BY COWFISH.
GOOGLE “OREGON STREET ARTIST”
and you get just two results, both seemingly generated
by bots. That puts us a bit behind Alabama (7 results)
and Kentucky (4), well behind Washington (170,000)
and California (161,000), and a nose ahead of Idaho and
Wyoming (both 0).
Oregon is not exactly a national center for street art,
the subversive guerilla art form that grew out of tagging
and other illegal urban graffiti in the 1970s and became
popularized by such documentary films as Exit Through
the Gift Shop and Style Wars. We’re talking Banksy and
Shepherd Fairey here, not cozy New Age murals of whales
and owls.
So when the city of Eugene decided to put on a street
art festival here this summer, it’s no surprise they looked
elsewhere for much of the talent.
The festival, dubbed “Eugene Walls,” kicks off
officially at the end of this month. It is part of a larger
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ARTIST
STEVEN LOPEZ STUDIED ART AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON.
ALL PHOTOS BY ATHENA DELENE
commitment, named the 20x21EUG Mural Project,
to commission 20 local murals by leading artists in
time for the International Association of Athletics
Federations World Championships to be held here in 2021.
“That will be one of the largest sporting events in
the world that year,” explains Isaac Marquez, the city’s
interim cultural services director, who is leading Eugene
Walls and is on the 20x21EUG committee. “So the context
for this [art] project is the world. The track and field
championships created an opportunity to do something
bold. Strategically, I used that as the pivot point to run
with this initiative.”
This will be the biggest community visual arts
undertaking here since the summer of 1974, when University
of Oregon art professor Jan Zach brought a half dozen
internationally known sculptors to town to create art in
public for the Oregon International Sculpture Symposium.
Works done that summer include Bruce Beasley’s Big Red
HUA TUNAN’S LARGE
MURAL SHOWS TIGERS
ATTACKING A DRAGON.
metal installation next to the Washington-Jefferson Street
Bridge and the tall, flat, friendly looking concrete space-
alien-like creatures, created by Hugh Townley, that can be
seen in Alton Baker Park.
Marquez talked to Eugene art consultant Tommie
Griffin when planning the mural project. Griffin, who was
involved with the 1974 symposium, gave this advice: “Go
big!”
And so, Marquez did. The street artists arriving here
to create work in the coming week are known around the
world. They come from Paris, from Argentina and Brazil,
from London and from Spain. They have long resumes.
They show work in international galleries and command
high prices. And they’ll be working in public on murals
that will stay here for years after they, the artists, are gone.
Among the muralists who will be here is New Yorker
DAN WITZ . He’s made a name for himself over the
past four decades in both the street art scene and the art
THE ACIDUM
PROJECT’S
ROBÉZIO MARQUEZ
WORKS IN
EUGENE.
eugeneweekly.com • July 20, 2017
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