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Photograph by Thomas Crone
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On Sunday afternoon, 47,000 St. Louisans jammed into Busch Stadium, enjoying the St. Louis tradition of playoff baseball. The assembled were numerous enough that their cars fanned outward from the ballpark like the rays of the sun, tucked into the most-unlikely (possibly even unsafe) corners of nearby Downtown.
Maybe a mile away, another St. Louis tradition was enjoying a more modest life. In the late ‘90s, Paint Louis was a cause celebre of the local arts scene, as hundreds of graffiti artists from around the country, then the world, descended on Downtown’s flood walls for days of painting and community-building. A few years into the run, the City’s initial enthusiasm had worn to acceptance, then to annoyance, and the plug was pulled on the event. While Paint Louis might not’ve been alive over the last decade, the flood walls were left standing. But thousands of square feet of freestyle art degraded over time, thanks to the effects of nature (in the form the sun and the rain) and man (in the form of youthful “scribblers”).
Earlier this summer, a few of the original members of Paint Louis decided to give the event a low-key reboot. Then, this past weekend, a dozen or so self-policing artists were retouching a couple hundred feet of the wall. We stopped by on Sunday to witness the progress and came away with an interesting triptych of stories.
Act One: Whisper
Earlier this summer, Whisper said that he painted a date on the flood wall, a way to tell local artists that Paint Louis would be back, if smaller than before, in October of 2012.
“This was a message to the city,” he said on Sunday. “This is your town. Be here with us.
“We didn’t want it to get out of control,” Whisper added, matter-of-factly. “What happened then is that it got to be such a big event that it was drawing a lot of bombers, who were running around putting their names on building and storefronts. We told people that this time out, we’d have a dozen here. And there were people, ones that I know, that weren’t invited to take part, because we didn’t want the bombers out and having Paint Louis shutdown like it was.”
Working on a span of wall that figured was about 100 feet long, Whisper applied paint using a roller, set atop extensions that stretched his work all the way to the top of the wall. As he chipped away, hip-hop played from a nearby truck. In the back of the bed was a host of supplies, including growlers of beer from 4 Hands Brewery, who simply passed along their beer as a gesture of goodwill to those painting along the walls, a moment of true, grassroots corporate support.
Whisper said that he, himself, spent the “summer doing carpentry work, so that I’d have enough money to buy paint. Everyone here is volunteering. Their paint, their time.”
When he looked down the wall, even the couple hundred feet that was okayed by the City for this ‘go round, he said that he saw the potential for the rest of the project. He mentioned that this stretch (at the tri-intersection of Choteau, Leonor K. Sullivan and Wharf streets) was a “turn and burn.” In effect, if someone came along and had an idea, wanted to paint over work being added this weekend, they could do so in the future. What’s not welcome going forward is people using it “as a practice wall, with no skills, no thought.”
He figured that over time, some of the work be covered. If so, his thought is the “spot will be lifted up,” back to its status as a showcase known ‘round the world.
“We were big enough to bring in people from Japan, Germany, England,” he said. “All the major artists still relevant today were here, back in the day.”
Act Two: Stun1
One of the originators, if not the man outright credited with the genesis of Paint Louis, is Stun1. Taking time out from his piece, Whisper walked me down the wall to a space where an artist was working low, crouched down with a can in his right hand and lit cigarillo on his lips.
Whisper said that the wall’s artists were a mix of “young, old, punk rockers, hip-hoppers.” If so, Stun1’s among the veterans. Asked about some of the early days, he said that the time was ripe for graf artists to make money in mainstream ways, working lots of times in the clubs of the original Washington Avenue. He said that his work was featured in venues like Cheetah and Liquid, when he was doing it for “probably 30 percent of what I should’ve been charging them.”
At the time, Camel cigarettes was a major promoter of club culture and electronic music, and they kept him in work, too, as did restaurants such as Flacco’s Tacos. As a day job, he did airbrushing at the Downtown hip-hop clothing landmark, Gus’ Fashions.
In 2000, though, he said that he suffered an attack at the hands of three assailants, who served two-and-a-half years apiece for a beating that left him with brain injuries and hearing loss. After that, he moved to Minneapolis, but he wanted to be back for this round of Paint Louis, going so far as to say that in a year, or so, he may move back.
“I am the king of graffiti here,” he said, extending his arms outward and sounding more joyous than boastful. “I’m under all the train bridges and overpasses. I’m known by all the train workers, bums and graffiti hounds.”
In town for the bulk of the weekend, Stun1, like the rest of the Paint Louis crew, was rained out on Friday; thing were cool, but tolerable for both Saturday and Sunday. On the latter afternoon, standing next to his stretch of wall, under a clear, blue sky, Stun1 said he was glad to be back.
“It’s going perfectly,” he said, practically. “It’s legal. We haven’t been stopped.”
Act Three: Fans
Walking back to my truck, I noticed a car drive up, with windows rolling down as the driver and, presumably, his wife peered out. He inquired first about the wall, saying that “it looks like your friends are having a good time.” Aside from Peat Wollaeger, I’d only met the rest of them that afternoon, but I didn’t want to give them a long explanation of all that. They wondered about what was going on and how far the work would go.
I gave them the brief history, as best I knew it: how Paint Louis was sanctioned, then banned, and how today was a first step back. They seemed upbeat about it all and wanted to express their like for the work, down “in a part of town that not a lot of people know about.”
They were there, it turned out, to see the USS Inaugural, the old minesweeper that lived along the riverfront until the great flood swept it down the river. For nearly two decades, the old boat’s been laying sideways in the river, a couple dozen feet off the City’s jagged coastline. They wondered if they could see the ship from the road, and I regretted to inform them that I’d seen the boat, but that it was still a bit down the road, requiring visitors to walk through a gravel business to get a peek. They didn’t seem inclined to do that, but were interested to hear what the boat looked like, tipped over in the waters of the Mississippi.
Altogether, it was a pleasant enough conversation, one that was lasting longer than I’d anticipated. The lady asked if I knew of plans to expand the flood walls, to push them higher and further down towards the Arch. I confessed that I didn’t know about any such plan.
A reporter at the beginning of the day, they’d now appointed me a conduit to the artists, standing a few dozen yards to my back.
“You tell them that if City builds more walls, they should get to paint all of them,” I was told with enthusiasm. “Tell them they’re doing a great job.”
It was such a surprising, unexpected discussion, that I didn’t pass along their compliments at the time. So I’ll go ahead I’ll do so now.
Photographs by Thomas Crone
