By Kaili Cochran
Going on its second year, the Spring Mural Jam allows over 60 artists to come to the walls of 14th Street and Hubbard. Emily Moody, the Chief Experience Officer for Phoenix Arts and Innovative District, and Elena Ohlander, a local muralist and artist, collaborated to create the event.
“For us, it meets people on the ground level where they are. So we have people driving by all day. We’ve invited the community out to just spend the day walking around as a participant, talking to the artists, being inspired by them, and seeing people that look like them painting walls,” Moody said. “But also it’s an accessibility piece, because artists or people might not feel comfortable walking through an art gallery or a museum, but this introduces them to art in a whole new way because it’s street-level outdoor gallery space.”
Each of the artists at the mural jam has different skill levels, visions, and reasons for coming out to the event. One muralist, Zende Randolph, is a mural artist at just 16 years old.
“I’ve been doing art since I was super little, since I was drawing whatever I wanted,” Randolph said. “You know, most people, they kind of have a deeper meaning for making art, but not me. I just make art because it looks cool.”
Another artist, Myah Freeman, developed her skills throughout her years growing up, and she is driven by her passion to honor her father who is also the inspiration of her mural in the event.
“The mural [behind me] is of my late father, and I will be redoing it,” Freeman said. “I want to zoom in and do a larger portrait so I can experiment with getting more fine details in my portraiture work for murals.”
Mike McIntire started painting murals around the same time as the first spring mural jam. McIntire has painted for both the 48-hour film festival and the original spring mural jam.
“My vision is I’m gonna make her as beautiful as possible, and she’s gonna be broken up in pieces. Kind of showing you know you could be broken and beautiful at the same time,” McIntire said. “I just recently did this as a painting for a contest, and I decided I’d bring that idea out to a bigger wall.”
All of these murals painted during the Jam will stay up for a year for locals to pass by and admire the different approaches and visions of art by each artist. Then, during the third annual spring mural jam, the walls will be repainted, and another muralist will have their work up.
The term for this project is also known as “adaptive reuse,” which is repurposing an existing structure instead of acquiring a new one. The Phoenix Arts District is allowing muralists to reuse these walls that have been standing empty for years.