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Media Advisory

 

For Immediate Release                                                                                     Contact:

July 31, 2014                                                         Erin Williams, 508 799-1400 x265

Internationally Renowned Artist tapped for downtown mural
PAWG Commissions Caleb Neelon 
for Large-scale Mural at Denholm Building
  


 

 

Worcester, MA - PAWG (Public Art Working Group), a subcommittee of the Worcester Cultural Coalition announces the installation of a new large-scale mural on the Chatham Street side of the historic Denholm building, 484 Main Street. The mural, to be installed beginning August 4, is the first step in an expansive plan to infuse the downtown with public art.  PAWG has tapped internationally acclaimed street artist and Massachusetts native Caleb Neelon for the Denholm Commission.Two other murals are being planned for the summer of 2015.

 

Cultural Development Director Erin I. Williams said, "Great cities deserve great art! The City of Worcester encourages and promotes the enrichment of the cultural landscape of the city through aesthetic improvements of public spaces, uniting artists and community and inspiring civic pride. This project is an important first step in that endeavor."

 

Neelon has public art works throughout the Commonwealth, in major American cities, and abroad in twenty-five countries. He has worked on State Department sponsored cultural projects, for schools, hospitals, and many cities seeking to enliven their cultural landscapes, including Instanbul, Turkey and Seville, Spain.

 

Neelon said he is pleased to have the opportunity to create something so close to home, "I'll be able to have an on-going relationship with the work." The scale of the 4-story Denholm mural, among the largest he has ever painted, is also hard for an artist like Neelon to pass up, "walls [like the Denholm's] have so much character and are exciting to paint," he said.

 

Public participation is being sought to serve as Community Docents during the installation process August 4-15th. The volunteer posts will assist with public inquiries about the project, while providing site oversight to avoid any disruption during the installation. Interested parties should contact Che Anderson at [email protected]

 

Additionally, a community celebration is being planned upon completion of the mural, which is to include participation by local youth in a project to compliment the mural. 

 

The City of Worcester and the PAWG are sponsoring the project, with funding being provided by Converse, Inc. and the Worcester Rotary Club with additional support from Consigli Construction, the Worcester Cultural Coalition, City of Worcester, Economy Paint Supply, and the Trustees of the Denholm building.

 

About the Artist

As a thirteen-year-old in February of 1990, Caleb Neelon visited family friends in small-town Germany with his mother and took a side trip to Berlin. For Neelon, the sight of the newly opened Berlin Wall, covered in graffiti and murals was a revelation. By the mid-1990s, Neelon was immersed in the global graffiti scene under the name SONIK. He traveled constantly and developed a vivid, homespun, and raw style of mixed media painting. He freely crossed boundaries between graffiti, murals, and what would soon be referred to as street art. At the same time, he wrote in-depth articles for graffiti fanzines. As years passed, these publications evolved into art and popular culture magazines, trade books, and feature films.

 

Caleb Neelon's bright, folksy works, frequently incorporating nautical and quilting motifs, can be seen in gallery and museum exhibitions and on walls around the world. In addition to visiting artist talks and programs, Neelon's work ranges from cultural diplomacy projects through the U.S. State Department; curatorial advisory work at museums, projects bringing artwork to hospitals, and public artwork projects in over thirty countries around the globe. Neelon regularly writes for national magazines and has authored over a dozen books, among them the landmark 2011 HarperCollins release The History of American Graffiti, which he co-authored with Roger Gastman. He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Ellen, baby daughter ZZ, and French bulldog Ferdinand.

 

A selection of Neelon's recent projects include a pair of mural in Turkey through the U.S. State Department, another at Children's Hospital Boston, several gallery projects and curatorial work on Pump Me Up: DC Subculture in the 1980s, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. A pair of documentary films he produced, including The Legend of Cool "Disco" Dan, the Henry Rollins-narrated story of Washington D.C.'s troubled 1980s years, and Wall Writers, the John Waters-narrated story of the early years of graffiti writing in New York and Philadelphia premiered in 2013. Since 2001, Neelon's projects have been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Life, Berliner Zeitung, Folha de Sao Paulo, PBS Newshour, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Phoenix, Wall Street Journal, Reason, City Journal, Paper, Artlog, The Economist, and Yale University Press' 2013 release the World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti.

 

For more information visit http://www.calebneelon.com.

 

About PAWG

The City of Worcester's Executive Office of Economic Development is leading an effort to increase the amount of publicly accessible art in Worcester. As part of these efforts, staff created a catalogue of existing public art as well as a public art map. In an effort to identify locations and opportunities throughout the city for the installation of additional permanent and/or temporary public art pieces, the Public Art Working Group (PAWG) was established. PAWG advocates for the creation and installation of new publicly accessible art and is currently working to identify possible sites for new public art.

PAWG's has proposed a three part plan.

  1. Commission large-scale public art in the downtown footprint
  2. Support local and regional artists in the development of public art throughout the City
  3. Encourage and support the engagement of young people and the general public in creating public art

Already under way are Caleb Neelon's mural, the first of three murals that are planned, and the Allen Court Art Alley, which will feature local artists producing wheat paste murals on the fa�ade of the former Telegram & Gazette building located at 20 Franklin Street, Worcester.

 

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