It seems I have stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest over on Facebook in a thread about the beautiful mural being painted by Panmela Castro on the western Wall of the Willy Street Co-op. The mural is gorgeous, replacing a sterile beige cinderblock wall with a broad golden ribbon, strands of crimson, and a sparkling pool of emerald. And yet I am bothered by it.
It is not the mural itself that bothers me, but the context the mural has been born into. It has been less than a week since the Co-op announced that they would keep the Jenifer Street driveway (which the mural faces) open to automobile traffic, after a contentious process bracketed at the Co-op’s move-in by what was perceived as a promise by the Co-op to not open a driveway onto Jenifer street, and at the end with the conclusion of a traffic study whose parameters did not include addressing the concerns brought up by the critics in the neighborhood. So the Co-op seems to have decided to paint over this ugly canvas with a pretty mural.
The Co-op sits at the epicenter of what local talk radio considers the most liberal bicycling bohemian bourgeois ward in the state. But it is clear the Co-op has staked its livelihood on attracting residents of the more conservative outer-ring of Madison. Those outer-ringers demand to be lavished with pavement in the form of abundant car parking and free-flowing automobile travel. Cheap and abundant oil doesn’t hurt either, never mind the wars, climate issues, and the fact that the oil and road building interests tend to donate to Republican candidates who care not one whit for social justice. What better way to take the neighborhood’s mind off the clash of culture going on at the Co-op than to affix an image to the wall from a young multimedia artist from Brazil who uses graffiti and street art to promote social change and awareness?
I regularly ride my bicycle along Jenifer Street past the store. Defenders of the Co-op’s driveway tell me that its financial success depends on those people driving from the outer ring and that I just have to tolerate their presence and the threat to my safety that increased traffic and a more visually cluttered environment creates. I feel as if I am being squeezed into a car-shaped mold and told to conform to how the world wants me to be. But inside I crave the freedom to ride my bicycle in a space where I don’t have to constantly yield due to a physical threat. In my imagination, there is another way for the Co-op to grow yet hold to the principles of the neighborhood in which it was founded, where any bicyclist can let their hair loose and ride freely, much like one might enjoy a country drive in a convertible that you see regularly in automobile commercials.
My predicament is exactly the same kind of juxtaposition of conformity and free self-expression that seems to be portrayed in the mural itself! The female subject’s body has had a rectangular frame imposed upon it. Cylindrical arms frame a rectangular body capped with square breasts. In the middle is a conventional head from which flows a mane of fanciful wavy hair. Flowing off into infinity toward…
That driveway. Ironically the flowing hair that represents self-expression in the mural could actually be a visual distraction for drivers as they head toward the Jenifer street driveway. And that means I will have to be even more ready to conform to how the world wants me to be.
What you said…
Version:1.0
StartHTML:0000000167
EndHTML:0000001912
StartFragment:0000000457
EndFragment:0000001896
Madison is direly in need of an
improved art scene. While the mural on the coop’s wall is not the
signifier of a sea-change in municipal art policy, it is a good
starting point to encourage other local businesses to foster and
support local/national/international artist to make Madison a
destination for art lovers, not just a pit stop on the way to other
regional art friendly cities.
The Willy Street Coop is a
fantastic and valuable part of not only the Wil-Mar Neighborhood but
the city proper. Allowing them an alternate access point on Jenifer
Street which in turn allows us in the neighborhood an easy back door
entrance to our local-organic-friendly-sustainable hook-up is both
beneficial to us an those visiting from afar (the east/west side).
Being a resident of Jenifer street
and an employee of a business on Williamson street, I have seen
neither an increase in in traffic on Jenny nor an increase in danger
to pedestrians or cyclists during construction or prior to. I know
this because spend roughly 95% of my life between the capital and
the Yahara, and 98% of my travel is Velo-oriented.
Listen to your mother and look
both ways before crossing the street. Oh yea… and quite yer belly achin’.
Wow. That’s reading a lot into what is simply intended to be a way of getting some public art out there. Think globally.
The issue is not really about the mural – it is about the history of the Co-op regarding the driveway and the missed opportunity to develop some environmental sustainability muscles. The Co-op seems to have used this great art to try to bury that story. This piece is intended to keep the memory of the driveway process alive so that we can learn from it and make better choices in the future. I will be writing more about this in the coming weeks. So check back and watch the story develop!
Madison is also direly in need of an improved sustainability scene when it comes to transportation, and the Co-op is uniquely positioned to lead the way, just as it has with the mural. The problem is, it is not leading. The Co-op isn’t even following – it is going backwards.