#31 Murals & Graffiti: Flint Public Art Project

0:05 Hey there, this is Arthur Bush speaking, host of Radio Free Flint. I'd like to bring some new information to your attention. We now have a website at www.radiofreflint.media. Please go to our website. You can play every one of these episodes. Look at some of the things we've done in the past. You can learn more about our guests. We have information and links to websites, articles, and so on. And we'd also like to bring your attention to a way that you can support our website. We have what they call a call to action button on the on the homepage of uh www.radiofreeflyn.media.

0:46 And you can uh give us 99 cents a month if you'd like. But we'd appreciate some support to offset our expenses, if you could. We'd we'd greatly appreciate it. Take care. Here's our episode. Thanks for listening. Oh uh hey, how are you? This is Radio Free Flint. You're listening to Arthur Bush, and we have a great uh guest for us today, interesting as heck. And her name is Sandra Branch. She is with the Flint Public Art Project as well as uh Gallery on the go or galleries on the go.

1:27 Uh welcome, Sarah, and thank you for taking the time to explain uh such a wonderful and interesting project that you've undertaken. Thank you, Sandra. Sandra, I'm sorry. That's okay. We called me Sandra up until now. But that's that's okay. They call me Miss Sandra around town. Yeah, and I shouldn't have any trouble with your name. Um so, in any event, uh, you are involved in the Flint Public Art Project. Tell us all about that. What is it? Well, the Flint Public Art Project is a nonprofit that was started in Flint by Stephen Sachs.

2:10 We took over in 2016. Uh Joe Schippani uh was our director, and I was uh on the board of directors. Then we uh changed it to a pretty much a public art and mural project to beautify Flint. And we brought a hundred murals last year with artists that were local as well as artists, international artists. This year, since the COVID is here, we're having a problem trying to negotiate around these circumstances. But we have murals going on, it'll be much less this year.

2:51 And if you see any of our muralists out there painting, just blow the horn, take a picture. But due to the COVID, we don't want you interacting with them. But you'll also see our little murals on the ground. Um, we also did something of for the Pride Project, and we put little rainbow hearts all around on the um on businesses that wanted to support the LBGT movement. So we did that also. But you will still see our murals and gallery on the go is still doing murals with the um aerosol artists that were graffitiing up the town. We're trying to change them into muralists and have them beautify the city.

3:37 They also do the boarding project with the city of Flint where we paint the boards that decorate some of the houses in the more depressed areas where we have seven out of ten of the homes are boarded up. So that gives people uh neighborhood uh adjustaposition of um beauty to blight. So well, that's interesting as heck. Uh uh so your project uh it run through the uh the Flint Art project. That how is that funded? Where do they get their money?

4:18 Well, we take private donations as well as we apply for several different grants throughout uh the area. We are now beginning to apply for international grants so we can get more money to pay the artists because they've done some beautiful work, but mostly they've done it for free out of out of the kindness of their arts. We pay for their um travel here and we house them ourselves, and then they paint these beautiful murals on, and this pretty much donated time because we don't have the money to fund all the paintings. So if somebody somebody in this uh stratosphere here that's listening to this podcast or who happens to stumble on to my many Facebook uh postings, where would I tell direct them to give you money?

5:10 Actually, we have um donations set up through our Facebook and Instagram pages. You can go to Flint PublicArt Project and at FlintArtproject.com. So you can you can reach us through Instagram at Flint PublicArt Project, or you can go to our website and just look us up on Facebook. All right. So, you know, I've had a long interest in graffiti, uh, as you could probably imagine. Yes, and one of my previous assignments, actually, for a long time, actually, I didn't like graffiti very much.

5:52 I still don't particularly. But, you know, years ago we had a guy named uh Robert Katrinik. And Robert Katrinik sometimes was known as the Leather Man, actually was known as the Leatherman on the south end of Flint, and he got the notion that he was sick of graffiti too, and so he started painting over all these uh tags, which is street language for graffiti. Yeah, that's their started painting up the town. I mean, it was an amazing thing what he did to South Saginaw Street. Well, yeah, we um kind of stepped in that slot in 2014 and we began to do that.

6:35 I was sitting at a train track and I saw the beautiful tags that they had time to do. And I said, Well, that's not like what I see in our city, you know. I see a bunch of scribbling, and then I saw some of the same names. I said, Well, that must mean they have time to do that. And I didn't really get mad about the train wait. And so I said, Well, if we could do this to some of the houses on the north side, because I was working at Christ Enrichment Center off of Hamilton at the time, and in that neighborhood, everything was lighted and left open. They weren't even boarding the houses up, and the kids were going in there and playing, and it was getting hurt, and it was just ridiculous.

7:20 So I said, What can I do being an artist? And I said, I can get these artists that are tagging up the town and try to give them some tips and skills and connections so where they could get paid for doing murals, and now that's what they're doing. Most of them are coming to me, getting assignments, and going out in the city and doing work for people and actually getting paid. So it has formed quite a few of the uh older ones. Now we've got a new crew that I've got to go under bridges and fetch or wait till the courts spit them out to me and get them for some uh community service work.

8:00 That's another thing. If you all want something painted and I have some community service artists, we can probably work out a deal. So you would also want to contact uh Gallery on the Go Division through Flint Public Art Project to do something like that. And if your son or daughter got in trouble tagging, you might want to hook them up with me so we can transform them into muralists. So you I'd be all for this idea. I've I'm fascinated by it. Uh, you know, I have a friend in Seattle, Lori Spieback, who is in is is uh she's um in the in the anti-graffiti business.

8:50 Basically, she does contracts with uh governments and companies that pay her to get rid of the graffiti, so they go out and and tackle the project, and they they're not doing murals, they're just getting rid of it. So uh when I heard about this, I was fascinated. Interesting because when you get rid of it, they see that as a blank canvas to come back and do more damage. Well, there's a battle, no question about it. There is a battle. Uh the one thing I always wanted to do, but never had time for, I guess maybe my next life I'll have time for it. I have time now, actually, is these graffiti. I should talk to the judges about this because the graffiti artists essentially telegraph what's going on in the community.

9:37 And where I really started getting interested in it was I had a friend who I won't call her a snitch because that's not really what she was, but she had an interest in graffiti and started documenting it throughout the city, and then started to understand what all that scribbling, as you called it, meant, and it does mean something, and it sends messages. And at one point in my career, long time ago, we used that in gang prosecutions where there were murders or you know, serious violent crimes, and we occasionally we introduced it as evidence.

10:18 So these things that you think are scribbles and don't make any sense, they're actually uh yeah, they're actually signs. They're actually signs to their their people, and it's uh a voice for the disenfranchised. It's definitely a language and they definitely speak out in times of turmoil. So they're kind of like unsung artists, yeah. But they cause a lot of damage. That's a kind of them. I educate them on the the possibility that they're preventing jobs from coming here because they're making places uninhabitable for businesses, and it runs their insurance up high, and that's why there are no jobs.

11:07 So the symptom becomes the problem. Yeah, and then they also they also telegraph to people in law enforcement, although I don't know that they've even got anybody around today that understands this stuff. Uh telegraphs to the people they probably don't want to have telegraph to what exactly they're up to. So uh, but what a wonderful idea that you're doing and great, great idea to turn a negative to a positive. And I've heard people talk about this, and they were saying that they took a tour or something. Was it downtown? Yes, we have uh um a virtual tour that you can take.

11:47 There's a map on our Facebook website so you can go and interact with the murals and go and see them in this time of social distancing and take a picture by them and send it to our page. Also, we um run contests like that where you can win art. Some of the artists that come here leave prints and we sell them for fundraisers. And uh you can win t-shirts and prints and stuff like that. Do you sell those through the Flint Council, uh Arts Council? We sell them usually at Totem Books in our events, but you can always pick up something that we've done, some of our artwork at Totem Books over there on um, I believe it's six, ten Grand Travers across from the White Horse Tavern.

12:38 Um the owner uh is a partner with us, and he supports everything that we do. We really appreciate Dean and his efforts to change the environment downtown because we wanted to change the narrative of Flint with our murals. And now we have we're adding pixels sticks where you can go up and take the um the barcode or the URC code off of the um mural and it'll link you to the artist and the that did the mural and give you um kind of like an art gallery experience outside because it'll tell you about the artist, it'll tell you about the mural, the interpretation of the art, and it'll also link you to the website of the artist so you can purchase art from the artist directly.

13:30 So we're trying to try to make it a happening. For sure. Well, you know, a lot of cities uh around the country do this. I know down in uh Florida, where I live a good part of the year, in St. Pete, they have uh murals and they're always trying to get people to take tours. We're linking with the Shine uh festival in St. Pete. So you will be seeing us down there in your other home because I too have a snowbird uh from Lake Wales, and we're gonna be visiting down there and bringing some of the artists from down there up here, and we're going to be participating down there.

14:11 But this year in October, we're going down for the Shine Festival to see if we can get a partnership going, a sister city. Oh, yeah, what a wonderful thing. Well, if you need any help, I'll I'll uh run some interference there myself. Uh, how do you pick a building to do it? You know, I I keep thinking of this poor poor kid in Detroit, who is who is really quite accomplished as an artist nationally and internationally. He paints a building and they they arrest him. Well, see, we get permission. See, I used to be law enforcement art, and I was uh sheriff in New Orleans, so that's why I intervene with the um uh program and the and the courts and do community service work.

15:01 And I also I understand that we need permission. So we actually put out um applications for people to get walls or give donate a wall, and then we put that on our list. We always have permission, so and we have so many people we we run out of artists to do the walls because so many people want their buildings painted for free, you know. Well, tell us a few of the few of the buildings that people might, you know, familiar landmarks that people might uh well if you go up Brush Alley downtown, you could see several murals up brush alley.

15:42 And go all the start down at um first street and go all the way up to the end of Brush Alley, and you'll see one, two, three, four. You got about six murals over there. Then on Garland Street, we have um about four or five. So, and then when you go down university, you'll have about six. And Grand Traverse from downtown up through where the school of um the International Academy is. We have several going that way and then up the street to the International Academy, and then that takes you down where um Winslow had done Art Winslow had done the murals, so that puts you down to Saginaw Street and that carries the murals out.

16:32 We did a few on Saginaw Street, we did one at Moffat Foods. Um Factory 2 has a mural. Hurley Hospital over by the Eastern Michigan Food Bank. There's murals, and oh, there's so many. There's a hundred of them. So actually, there's about 175 that we did in the last two years. Are there uh what do they use as a medium? We use exterior house paint. So do you you get donations for for for this? Or no, we take the money from the grant and we spend it on paint. That's the majority of the money goes towards paint.

17:16 We just recently acquired a sponsor with the aerosol paint. We also go over it with aerosol paint for the details, and we we're with Cobra with a K, Cobra paints. We will be a distributor, and that's a specific special aerosol for graffiti artists or aerosol artists. Yes, that's it's a specialty because at a low pressure you can make fine lines. And with uh high pressure, you can you can make large, big lines. It depends on the airflow from the can going out the caps.

17:58 The caps are used like brushes for the brush strokes. So they they have quite an interesting array of tools to uh make those murals. It's yeah, it's not as easy as just taking a can of uh rust soleum and going out there and going wild. Yeah, I've seen some of that artwork. It's not so good. I remember one time they they painted up uh Flushing Park with a bunch of uh offensive, racially uh offensive uh uh tags all over the park, and eventually it turned out to be a bunch of uh it was hate stuff, that's what it was. Yeah, it was uh and it was intimidating to uh to a family that was out there.

18:44 They had a family reunion out there and they were painting up the pavilions, and uh eventually uh Judge Netta could have that case and they put them in jail. Yeah, well sometimes that's that is the outcome. It depends on if they're able to trans be transformed or or be reformed. If they are not, then that's their fate. And I kind of tell them this is this is what happens when you criminally damage someone's property. So when they get with me, I kind of give them an education as well as teach them a skill set that they can use to make money with.

19:25 So you're doing mentoring as well with this project. Right. I've been mentoring, I'm I'm kind of known as the mom of graffiti artists. They know me and I don't know a lot of them, but they find me. And when I do find them, then I tell them, look, it's not fun and games. If you're gonna work with me, you can't spray paint up the town. And I learn their tags and I tell them I'll stand up for them in court if it's something that they had done, but if something that they're doing currently, no, I'm not gonna stand up for them. Well you're my hero. You're my hero. Where were you in the where were you in the last decade?

20:08 Yeah, well. Oh my gosh. And uh so these artists are I mean the I I uh aerosol. What did you call it? Aerosol artists. Yeah, aerosol artists. That's different than graffiti. It gives an or of respect to to this to this activity. Now, not very I was gonna say that the uh when these guys are going out, now one of the things I learned from being the prosecuting attorney in Flint, Michigan, for so many years is that you can you can cover it up, but Leatherman got respect from those on the street, they didn't come and mess up his stuff, they uh they decided to leave his stuff alone for the most part.

21:00 But each other rivals they tag on top of each other, and God knows how much paint they've used. That's a nuts. So, yeah, it is, it's a war. But that's right, with your people that are going out and doing this uh work with and some of it's absolutely gorgeous and and uh creative and magnificent. Thank you. Do they come out and wreck it? I mean, do they come out and tag out? Oh no, not often do they come out and go over the other artists' work because we introduce them to the artist, and there becomes a mutual respect, and they learn and get techniques from these artists.

21:43 So it's a matter of actually communication and respect, and and uh oh, we lost her. Oh no, we have lost our our guest. So, in that case, we've lost a connection that's modern technology. We'll have to take a break here, and we'll be right back. Sorry about that. Okay, we're back. We have her back. I've learned not to get excited about this because I've had power outages uh living out here in the middle of the state forest, and uh so occasionally we have that as a problem.

22:28 No, I forgot. Oh, yeah, we're talking about respect and artists coming back and not tagging over your beautiful work. And I take it so it's because we actually um have taken the time to get to know them, to see what they're talking about, what they're doing, and we give them a um an outlet to to actually express their art and to actually think it out and put something out there that's that's a well-thought out piece. So, what's the subject of these various murals? Is there any common themes involved in any of this? Or do you tell them hey, hey, this is what we want to have flowers, or we want to have uh you know, some kind of mess social justice message or something of the sort?

23:19 Actually, it was to change the narrative of Flint and to include everyone. Um, in certain areas we went, like the um Hispanic Tech Center, Latinx, we went over there and we painted um things that were culturally relevant in that area, and so we give each area their due respect and we ask them what they want to see in their neighborhood, and we kind of do that, so it's a it's a matter of community involvement, they're all community art projects, so bring in the voice of the community. You're asking the community or neighbors or businesses what they like to see, and then they kind of they kind of reach agreement with the artists, yes, yes, and they're all all about Flint.

24:12 Even some of the uh individuals that they paint are Flint residents, like the two girls, the love sisters over at the um Buckham Alley, those are Flint residents, and they love the festivals down there in downtown, and so we made them part of the scene. Um but it's all about inclusion, family, um, community, togetherness, harmony, peace. That's usually what the message is. Beauty. You're a you're you're a you're a saint uh to bring this to our town.

24:53 And and I think people, if they step back and see what you're doing and follow you around for a couple weeks, we might be able to get, we might get to be able to take this to Grand Blanc and other places. Uh you don't just stay in the city, do you? No, we get requests all over, so that's why we're reaching out to other uh sister cities so we can help them and show them how to conduct a community art project. It's also we did it in depressed areas that were little micro um business areas, and paint just actually revived the area.

25:33 It's one way to do like a remodel without investing much money, it's just paint, and it brings people to their stores and their business areas and makes it a lot more accommodating and friendly. So, have you taken it to the out county in Genesee? I mean, I'm talking about places like Grand Blanc or Flushing or Davison or Mount Morris. Uh have you been working in any of those areas? No, we mostly concentrate on Genesee County because it is Flint public art project. So we want to fix our own backyard before we venture out. So you know, I you might have misunderstood my question.

26:15 Uh what I'm asking is do you just do the city of Flint or do you have murals outside the city itself? Okay, as the Flint Public Art Project, we don't have too many that have gone outside of Flint yet. Okay. But our artists do. Our artists get jobs in La Pier, and a lot of um work has been done in Fenton and Holly by uh scraps, Kevin Burdick. So he's gotten a lot of jobs just from working with us, and that's another way that the artists can get employment, is they see that the work that they've done for us and they get commissioned work all over the place.

27:01 And he's gone up as far as Traverse City with um some of his work. So he's he's quite well known through the state now. Good for you. You know, the most unusual public art, which I think we lack in and uh at least my time when I was a county commissioner way back in the 80s. I was really in, I really wanted to see more public art downtown, especially uh where there was some of the development was going on. And uh, but uh my son lives in Seattle, and uh they have this, you know, in the old part of Seattle, they have this one alley.

27:41 It reminded me a little bit about of uh brush alley, and they call it the gum wall. Yes, and the gum wall, everybody sticks their gum. That's kind of gross, but it's very interesting. Well, it is interesting, and occasionally they clean it, occasionally they clean it and they start all over, but everybody takes their gum and puts it up on this brick wall, they had to seal the wall, but it's all it's it's it's a gorgeous. Maybe I'll post a picture with your podcast of the gum wall in Seattle, but it has all these uh different colors, right?

28:22 It's a rainbow of gum. It is indeed. And they uh I know my son, you know, he has a lot of guests from out of town come to visit him, and and they all want to see the gum wall, so it's it's well known. So so do you have um do you have a favorite of all the murals? Oh my gosh. Which one of your children do you like best? But I mean, you know, yeah, I know there's so many, but I happen to love Emily Ding's mural on Garland Street where the birds are flying and the girl is sitting there looking serene and it's rainbow colored in the background.

29:02 I love that one, I just love it, it just brings me joy. But that's that's what we want to do. We want to bring people joy and change the narrative of Flint. Forget all the negative, let's make it something positive. For sure. And we also uh love to use the um artists coming out of Mott and U of M Flint. We fit featured a few of those, um, like Isaiah Um Baltimore. I can't, I can't I'm messing up his name, but he came out of Flint and he did the girl, the lady with the pearl earrings.

29:42 That was one of my favorites, but it was gone over by another artist with uh a tribute to a memorial, a memoriam for someone that had died. But he's an awesome artist, and he had just graduated last year, and so we're making a um kind of a place for those artists to grow from so they can come from Flint and actually get international press. We had write-ups in Paris magazines, um we're in Brazil publications and in Acapuco and and Peru. We've had artists from all over the world, so a lot of the press comes from all over the world.

30:33 Finally, I am so proud. What an accomplishment! Well, we we have a history now. Now you uh you also paint up basketball courts, I'm told. Yes, that's a gallery on the go project. Um, we are working with Keith Genesee Parks Beautiful, and uh we've done murals in Cook Park and Dewey Park, and we have some other parks on our list. We're going to do a um a human chess board in one of the parks, and we're also going to do some hopscotch for the kids and little games that we can paint on the asphalt, on the tennis courts that aren't being used as tennis courts right now.

31:20 So we can do stuff like that on the edges, and and the kids love it, and they love playing on that type of um court. It's over. I'll give you a tip. Go over to Lakeside there, Fred Lake. You know, they've got some courts and stuff there. They they could use it, and it might discourage people from busting up bottles on them courts. Yeah, that's what I said. They have a lot of problems with uh vandalism over there. Maybe that might soften them up. It's an old story. Uh so uh well, I'm I'm speechless because you you have you have taken me to a new level here. Uh now, do you have projects that are group projects or are they just all done by a single artist?

32:07 No, a lot of them are group projects, and gallery on the go always uses uh local artists in conjunction with international artists on our projects. So we we're kind of getting the best that they have to offer. And we keep them busy, too busy to go spray paint up the walls. Yeah, and I'm sure the police, I'm sure the police appreciate that. Oh, the police are helping us. The police actually guard them when they're painting and and and talk to them and bring them water. They they have a new relationship with the police that they never had before. Oh, that's a beautiful thing there.

32:47 Now, has the has the mayor and the city council have they been supportive of you? Yes, we've gotten awards. Galley on the go has gotten awards from city council back in 2015 for the Obama Little Miss Flint Mural. And um, we have been recognized uh by the Chamber of Commerce. We got an arts achievement nomination last year. So we we are getting recognition in our hometown. Well, good for you, and I have to say another one of my favorite murals is the tallest one in Flint and Brush Alley, done by Scraps, one of my favorite artists, Kevin Burdick.

33:30 And it's six stories tall, and it's a crane in a sunset on a um a beautiful um river scene. It's really gorgeous. You gotta see that one art. Yeah. Now you have quite a neglect background. You you've been in law enforcement, you're an artist. I had a there were too many, too many different things. I didn't write them all down, but uh tell us a little bit about yourself before we sign off here. It would be neglectful of me not to let people know who you are. I'm a proud graduate of Bentley High School, and from there I went to U of M Flint when it was just the crop building and a few uh mop buildings downtown, and I majored in criminal justice.

34:16 I went down to New Orleans and became a sheriff, uh deputy sheriff, and then went through the academy and became um indigent release counselor and syntap was the name of it, and I worked under Major Hunter, and I was a liaison to the magistrate court, the DA's office in the sheriff's department, and I went to every session of magistrate court in my 12-hour shift and and recommended people for a low or free bail if they uh qualified for the program, and then I would set them up with community service, and I noticed the frequency of the black youth and their recidivism.

35:03 And some of them had a um arrest record as long as they were tall by the time they were 17, from juvenile offenses all the way up through adult offenses when they started charging them as an adult at the age of 16. And I said, This is crazy. They didn't even qualify for the program, and they weren't even old enough to go vote or fight in a war. And I thought, well, there's gotta be something we can do to stop these kids before they get to this point. And I decided to um go back to school and major in art and try to reach these kids through art at a different level, and that's kind of this my story.

35:50 That's quite a story. Are you uh are you a Flint native? Yes, I was born in Flint and off of uh Church Street, church in Grand Travers. As a matter of fact, I lived in that area where the uh Red Cross building is. Well, there's a beautiful house in that neighborhood that went down for the count, but they still have now. Uh what high school did you go to, Southwestern? Well, I would have gone to Southwestern, but we moved out to Burton, and I live one one street from uh Home Depot. So we were close to Flint, but we were still in Burton.

36:31 So I ended up going to the Bentley School System and graduated from there. But I love my bulldogs. Yeah. Well, I can see the people of Flint love you because you're uh doing some amazing things for the town. I appreciate the time uh here. Uh thank you. I I love Flint and I really support everything you're doing, Art. I appreciate you uh even giving back now after you've served us for so long in uh the county and the city, and now you're giving back uh to the community. I I appreciate you. Well, thank you very much. Uh it's it's been a lot of fun to do this uh project, uh Radio Free Flint, and I hope to get more involved.

37:15 But I I do want to pass one thing along. If you need some help uh with grants or whatever, uh I'm happy to give you a little bit of advice here and there. And I know I know a few people out there I could shame into helping you. And uh keep up the good work. One of them would be Stephen Hetty. I'd get him involved as soon as I could. Uh all right. Hetty did paint up the town. Remember, we had paint up the town, and he led that effort for many years. And uh he knows how to turn old paint into uh into good paint. Now that's a good trick. I don't know what his technique is, but uh anyway, Stephen Hetty, my hats off to you, and uh I'll start painting.

37:57 My nephew works or uh my my cousins uh works for Stephen and does all the historic, historic uh uh Mr. Hetty. Um, if it's the same one that was down at Flint Job Court, he he's a legend. He is a legend, and uh and Joey Katrinick, who is a relation to the leather man, was his uncle, he has taken up the tradition in a different way. If you walk in the Genesee County Courthouse, you'll see all the restoration of all the gold leaf and all that, and throughout the murals, and the and they re um, you know, they came in and uh fixed all that back up to how it used to be when they they built the courthouse.

38:39 Anyway, I've got the run and thank you again for joining us and uh keep in touch. Thank you, thank you. I will. All right. Okay, very good. Now, uh one thing I want to say to you guys, I'm gonna put in a plug for this group. If you got a couple extra quarters to send along, send it to Sandra Branch at Flint Public Art Project or Gallery on the go and uh look that up on Facebook or on the internet and just Google it. And if you have any trouble finding her, get me a call here at Radio Free Flint, and we'll be happy to help you. And if you like our show and our programming, you can like us wherever you may or rate us because I haven't had too many people rate us yet.

39:25 And uh, we appreciate all of your support. Thank you, God bless, and we're over and out. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you, bye.