History
The first street mural for Black Lives Matter was painted in Washington, D.C., with Charlotte also painting one. [5]
Black Lives Matter protests occurred throughout June 2020 in Capitol Hill, Seattle. When the Seattle Police Department abandoned the East Precinct building there on June 8, protestors occupied the six-block area nearby. This eventually became the CHOP. [6]
On the morning of June 10, 2020, Takiyah Ward and Joey Nix recruited artists with the text: "Yo. We are looking for Black artists to add their style to the Seattle Black Lives Matter street mural...We want you, you down?” As they started painting, other artists joined in from the street. 16 artists completed the mural over the next three days, with Japhy White plotting the mural out in white paint, and the others each choosing a letter to fill. [1]
Ward later recalled that "Being an artist, I had to act from the biggest and strongest way that I could. And that’s why the mural happened." Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr., she believed he "would champion the movement and champion the message of people fighting and acting from where they are." [7]
Artist Kimisha Turner, who painted the first "B", later described her experience: [8]
When we got there, it was so interesting [because] it had been kind of wet and then all of a sudden it just got dry and sunny and so many people were out there. It was during the [2020] protests and everything, but it was so welcoming and magical. I only knew a handful of the artists, of course now, we’re almost like family. I had my son out there. Everybody was bringing us water, they were taking care of us. Wow, I’m actually really part of a huge moment when it comes to not only doing something with this strong statement, but being a part of the protests where we were being called terrorists and stuff by Donald Trump.
Many of the original 16 artists formed the Vivid Matter Collective after painting the mural in order to steward its preservation. [1] The collective's mission is to "spread truth through art." [7]
Maintenance
The mural's base layer was a concrete binding agent, and the artists intended to seal the mural the day after completing it, but rainy weather cancelled their plans. Once CHOP ended and vehicle traffic returned to the street, the collective started speaking with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) about ways to maintain the mural more permanently. On July 5, 2020, some outside artists attempted to protect the mural by sealing it, but this damaged the paint and trapped dirt against the mural. As they worked, onlookers called the police, worried that the mural was being defaced. When the police and SDOT employees spoke with the artists, they let the artists continue sealing the work, and SDOT later apologized for not verifying the artist with the collective. Some of the original artists confronted the sealers and argued over the changes, but they let the sealers finish because they were close to done. [9] SDOT also installed posts around the mural in July to prevent cars from driving over it, and installed a four-way stop sign at a nearby intersection to slow traffic in the area. [10]
The collective then reached an agreement with Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture to make the mural permanent. The city said this was "an acknowledgement of the cultural significance of the site in the Black Lives Matter movement." [11] Realizing the mural would continue to deteriorate, both from the sealant and imperfect binding to the road, the collective and SDOT agreed to remove and redo the mural on September 22, 2020. [4] [10] SDOT sanded off the original paint, grinding the street down in the shape of the letters to smooth the base, and pressure washed the site. [4] The mural was then repainted with colorful, block letters, each contributed by a different artist from the Vivid Matter Collective like in the original work. [12] [13] SDOT paid the collective $50,000 to repaint the mural, coming to about $3,000 per artist. [14]
The mural is repainted annually in a collaboration between SDOT and the Vivid Matter Collective. [15] To protect the pedestrian area, slower traffic lanes came to displace East Pine Street's curb parking. The work will require periodic maintenance over time. [16] [17] [18]
In 2023, the repainting weekend expanded into a weekend of community art-making in honor of Elijah Lewis, a community organizer who had recently been killed in a road rage incident blocks from the mural. [19]
Content
Turner chose to paint the letter "B" in "BLACK", saying it was "because I have a Black boy and I want to begin it." Her son was with her when she painted the original mural and added his hand print to it. [8]
In the original 2020 mural, the artist for the letter "A" in "BLACK" painted the letter with her family. They added the ashes of the artist's mother into her favorite paint color, saying "This is something she would have been passionate about … we still wanted her to be a part of it because we knew this was something that would have aligned with her goals, and with how she thought the world should be." [5]
After the 2020 repainting, the "E" in "MATTER" featured representations of graffiti seen around the city, and its artist was criticized for including the anti-police slogan ACAB, apparently without notifying other artists. The mayor's office said the collective would ask the artist to remove the slogan. An organizer of Capitol Hill Pride expressed anger that the artist was being censored: "It’s literally how we feel about SPD. They may not like the words and things like that, but again, please respect artists’ rights and the community’s rights." [14]
