Magic City Mural Collective
The Magic City Mural Collective is a group of artists that worked with community groups and property owners to create outdoor painted murals in Birmingham. The group's members included Brandon Watkins, Doug Balous, Paul Cordes Wilm, Merrilee Challiss, Creighton Tynes; Scotty Lee and Bo Hughins. The groups goals included a plan "to connect the 99 neighborhoods of Birmingham through public art".
The collective was founded in October 2013 to create REV Birmingham's first "It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham" mural in downtown Woodlawn. The collective's largest completed work, a 120-foot long "It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham" on the roof of Trim Tab Brewing Company, was supported in part by donations solicited through Kickstarter.
The artists in the collective also put together a group show of their work which was exhibited at Bottletree Cafe in 2014.
In March 2015 the group raised money through UAB's crowdfunding site to support a project to collaborate with the UAB Deptartment of Mechanical Engineering to design and build a computer-controlled painting apparatus called the "R2 Paintbot"
The collective was inactive through much of 2015, in part due to controversies raised by Tynes' attempt to trademark the phrase "It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham". The group continues to meet to discuss future projects.
Murals
- It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham, Woodlawn, January 2014
- It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham, John's City Diner, August 2014
- It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham, Trim Tab Brewing Company,
- Dream The Unthinkable (for Parker High School), Smithfield
Among the collective's unrealized projects are a new mural over the fading TALS mural on U.S. Highway 280 in Mountain Brook, a mural for the Birmingham Barons on Norfolk Southern Railroad's retaining wall facing Railroad Park, and Challis' dream for a 10-story mural somewhere in the city depicting Birmingham-born jazz legend Sun Ra.
See also
References
- Markham, Madoline (January 29, 2014) "Mural project under discussion for 280." Village Living
- Buchanan, Charles (July 17, 2014) "Local Color: A mural collective aims to give the city a fresh look." Birmingham magazine