9th Ave Mural Project Coming Saturday

On a recent trip to Miami, I stumbled upon the Wynwood Art District. For those who don't know, here's the wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynwood.

Surrounding the Wynwood Walls, an outdoor permanent mural exhibit, are streets and streets of street art. Some of the best street art I have had the good fortune of seeing.

After being around such culture and brazen pride in art, my Bradenton glasses were tinged just a little bit differently when I got back. All around us are buildings with graffiti on them. Once nice, clean buildings that now house some rudimentary tags and a bums cardboard pee box.

A few days after coming back I decided to go chat with the manager of the Hope Thrift Store. Hope Thrift store is located on 8th avenue downtown, but the back of the building faces 9th Ave. It's a 2,200 sq ft. wall with a humongous open line of sight to 3 different streets. On top of that it sits just outside of the Village of the Arts. After some chatting and bally hooing about how art helps the economy and can be used to promote their cause, we got the okay to do what we wanted to do, get an organization to sponsor us so we can bring some serious street art to Bradenton.

So on Saturday March 10th, 12 artists will take one day to transform this old nasty wall, into a long lasting piece of art worthy of Bradenton's spot on the top 25 Arts Cities list. Until then, check out the mural page located here, for updated info on the project.