Like a souped-up sugar cube, the hulking white Wachovia Building dominates the triangle surrounding downtown Asheville's Pritchard Park.
So when the possibility arose that the enormous blockish building might come on the market, we at Xpress began spinning grand scenarios about its future. ...
Up close, the white quartz chips that pebble the Wachovia Building's expansive surfaces try their best to suggest an interesting, naturalistic texture. From any distance, however, it resembles a big, awkward vacancy amid downtown Asheville's colorful architectural mosaic -- as if it had just moved here from Charlotte or Raleigh and hadn't yet learned to dress like the locals.
Maybe its new owners should give it a makeover. Its monotonous, windowless white walls beg to be humanized with a touch of color. And since Asheville is becoming an increasingly world-famous center for folk arts, why not elevate one of America's most vibrant yet least recognized modern folk-art genres to the gallery status many art aficionados already believe it deserves? Why not hire some of Asheville's most talented young graffiti artists to paint a mural on the Wachovia Building? Perhaps someone like the local tag artist who styles himself Ishmael could help save us from this great White Whale.
I asked local photographer/graffiti collector Molly Warlick what she thought of the idea.
"It would fit right in there," she mused enthusiastically after taking a second look at a building she usually tries to ignore. "It would make people look up, instead of looking down on the sidewalks."
The graffiti creations Warlick and other connoisseurs of hip-hop art collect are not your run-of-the-mill "tagging," those signatures scrawled in a cryptic arabesque -- originally associated with street gangs -- that modern cities' sterile, impersonal architecture seems to attract the way a white carpet invites stains. Nor are they confined to that most time-honored of graffiti traditions, the midnight message of political protest (such as the "No War" tag that's cropped up all over downtown since Sept. 11 -- including on Wachovia's facade).
"You see a lot of it hidden," notes Warlick. "It's not all [about] ruining, defacing other people's property. A lot of it's underground, where average people never see it -- only hitchhikers or people hanging out under bridges or getting off the beaten path. ... They're the only people that are ever going to find it." One graffiti artist Warlick met was a UNCA art student who wanted to create paintings that the homeless and penniless could see and enjoy.
-- Steve Rasmussen
UNCA language and literature Professor David Hopes is one who's strayed from the beaten path and stumbled on what he calls "Asheville's own Altamira." In a recent article for the Citizen-Times, Hopes described how he'd followed an obscure trail near his River District studio down which he'd repeatedly seen groups of youths disappear. The trail led to the base of the Smokey Park Bridge, where he discovered a stunning trove of spray-painted art.
I wrote Hopes to ask if he thought more owners of bland urban buildings ought to consider giving artistic but underemployed youths a chance to practice their craft in the open.
"I think that Asheville could be a pioneer in making this sort of outsider art an official part of cultural life," Hopes replied. "I think that private, business support of inventive hip-hop art would do a lot to heal the rift between the Chamber of Commerce and the Street."
"Any owner certainly has a creative license" to muralize an empty wall answered Superintendent of Cultural Arts David Mitchell when asked if the city would object. "I'm sure that artists would enjoy such a canvas, where their art that has traditionally been underground would have a wider audience."
In fact, Mitchell's not just sitting back and waiting for this to happen. The city's new arts czar, who's served as a director of youth art programs in the past, is enthusiastic about Asheville's underground-art scene. Mosaic Vortex, the youth-artists' organization, has shown him local hip-hop art that he considers "outstanding, very interpretive, artistically meritorious," and he wants to "make this underground art ... aboveground" so that both residents and visitors to the city can see and appreciate it. (The Vortex is also working with him to help control "misplaced graffiti," he noted.)
"What I'm hoping to do is establish a program for graffiti artists that would allow them the opportunity to express their artistic talents, statements they want to make. ... There's nothing violent about [this art], there's nothing threatening about it to me, but I do believe it's 'artworthy.'"
Mitchell also believes that an underground edition of the highly popular City Center Art Walks could be a significant boon to the local economy. If Asheville became known as a center for this vibrant new folk art, tourists -- bearing cash -- would flock here just to see it. He added that the mayor -- whom he terms "definitely artist-friendly" -- has expressed support for the idea.
"I believe it's something that would put us on the map in terms of public art," Mitchell said.
Or as Hopes puts it: "For the Wachovia Building to bloom out in a billion tags and burns would not only be cool as hell, but get the news cameras of the world down onto Pritchard Park. That's what we want, isn't it?"
-- Steve Rasmussen