The Graffiti Mural - Monmouth, IL
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 40° 54.695 W 090° 38.949
15T E 697982 N 4531602
Buchanan Arts center director put on note on this wall and told gang taggers to create something artistic...what ever they wanted ....
Waymark Code: WMXC1B
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 12/24/2017
Views: 1
County of mural: Warren County
Location of art alley off S. A St., rear side of Buchanan Center for the Arts, Monmouth
Artist: well one anyway Bobby Hall
Mural finished 2010
'“There were people who wanted to catch [the spray painters] and hang them up by their thumbs,” she says. [Towmey]
"Instead, she taped a note to the wall inviting the teens to express their art in a mural, one accepted by the community. She bought them high-quality paints and left her door open for guidance.
'“They were a scary lot at first,” she says, with their tattoos, piercings, dyed hair and tattered clothes. “But, you had to look past that.” She says she learned some of the half-dozen aerosol artists lived on the streets, going from couch to couch, sometimes sleeping in ATM machine enclosures.
"However, as the teens’ art developed and their mural grew to completion, they grew and matured, too. High school dropouts went back to school to get a degree. They got jobs and moved into homes of their own.
"The story of the Monmouth graffiti artists was told in a segment of the PBS show Arts Across Illinois, underwritten by the Illinois Arts Council. The center has a link to it on its website: bcaarts.org." ~ NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS, By BEVERLEY SCOBELL • DEC 1, 2010