Art or vandalism?

We don't like to put up photos of graffiti here as it's not in the same category as what this blog is dedicated to depict.  Here, we make a bit of an exception.

The scenes depicted above are of the backs of two local office buildings.  Both are actively occupied. I.e., there's going businesses in them. They aren't abandoned buildings.

So what, you may ask.

Well, graffiti has been a feature on the back of these buildings for a long time, but it's grown markedly worse in recent years.  The amount of graffiti has increased as the building on the right has been oddly popularized in the local press. And when I say the building, I mean the alley.  For reasons that aren't apparent to me, the fire escape  has become locally celebrated as some sort of a wonder.  That's drawn people to trespass on it and as that's occurred, graffiti has likewise increased as well.  So have high school graduation pictures with the staircase as a backdrop and even wedding photos.

And now a local theater company.

I'm not a big fan of local theater, which speaks poorly of me. When I was very young my parents introduced me to the theater at the local community college which was a real treat for all of us grade school kids.  I can dimly recall seeing You're A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Man From Lamancha at the college theater.  While in high school I was never in theater but about that time I was introduced to the text of plays as literature, and I really like some of those.  I've seen more college production in latter days, including when I was in college, including, by my recollection, The Dark Of the Moon, which I don't particularly care for, and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I do.  When our kids were little, we took them to a college play about the Wright Brothers.

Local theater, however, is another deal entirely and you have to admire the people who are willing to do it.  It doesn't get hte same viewership as college theater, for one thing.  And the quality fo the volunteers is bound to be uneven.

Anyhow, there's a couple local theater companies around here and one of them decided to put on a version of a famous Greek play.  I've read the text of the play as a college student, which is a long time ago, but I can dimly recall the outline of it.  In this production of the play, apparently, there's an element that emphasizes the need to put on a play in spite of hte presence of an Athenian plague, which apparently might be a real background story to the original play.  I.e., it was staged during a plague, perhaps, during which the author felt it critical to reopen the Athenian theaters in spite of hte risks.

There's a lot of things that are interesting about that, including that if that's correct, ancient Greeks, while they may not have had the germ theory of disease, grasped that hanging around in groups spread it.  Athens apparently closed up shop to try to combat it, something that might seem familiar to the readers here.  If my understanding of the views at the time are correct, there were also those who dissented from that view. . . which is also interesting in context.

In the current context, it's generally those who are on the left to the center left, politically, who have been for keeping things shut down and a tight quarantine, while on the right to the center right the view is the opposite.  In the middle, where most folks are, the views are nuanced.  On the edges, they aren't.

Anyhow, most theater people are on the hard left.  It's the hard left that generally would really have a really tight quarantine.  Probably most people in local theater on are the left somewhere.

Which makes a play all about protesting quarantines oddly ironic.

Anyhow, that's not why we have posted this here.  Apparently determining to stage this out in the open for a certain sort of street cred feel to it, the producers have added to the graffitti.

This may make the town about hte only town around which graffitti making reference to ancient Greece, but it's still graffitti.  Of course, there was a lot of it before.

I'm not quite sure what to think.

The play on opening day.  I happened to be in the building at the time and so I snapped this photo.  There wasn't a large crowd, but then it was opening day during a time of pandemic too.

One thing maybe the theater company and the audience might think is how gracious the building occupants are.  It's impossible not to notice a thing like this and in a lot of places the reaction would have been hugely negative.  No reaction at all isn't permission, but it is pretty gracious.

Vita Sana Olive Oil Company, Casper Wyoming

These are paintings on the side of the Vita Sana Olive Oil Company in Casper, Wyoming.  The speciality food store sells more than olive oil, but its focus originated with that, as one of these paintings depicts.

 

Antelope mural, Laramie Wyoming

 

Somehow I missed this mural in downtown Laramie when I was otherwise photographing the excellent set of murals there.  This one depicts Wyoming scenes very skillfully, along with a state map, on the side of a building.

It also contains a sketch of the mythical Wyoming jackalope and a quote from D. L. Moody.  The quote depicted with the jackalope is; “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”

Elk Mountain Trading Company. Elk Mountain, Wyoming.

This is the Elk Mountain Trading Company building in the tiny town of Elk Mountain, Wyoming.  Built in 1932, the building and business name is presently used by a restaurant.

Graffiti Records Mural, Rock Springs Wyoming

This is a mural on the side of Graffiti Records in Rocks Springs, Wyoming.A fox and a jack rabbit adorn the buidling.

CPA Office Murals, Rock Springs Wyoming.

The office of a CPA in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  Most of the themes on this side of the building have to do with the rights of women in society.

The other side of this building also has murals, but I have yet to photograph them.

Former Grocery Store, Rocks Springs, Wyoming.

Rock Springs Wyoming has a fairly extensive old downtown dating from the early 20th Century.  Not all of the buildings are in good shape by any means, but they do provide an example of what an early 20th Century downtown was like.  Very few newer buildings have been built in Rock Spring's old business district and therefore, in that sense, its well preserved.

One of the buildings located there is this former grocery store which features a fairly typical, and well preserved, painted wall advertising its wares.

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Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Grant Street Grocery in Casper Wyoming is the only surviving small neighborhood grocery store in the town and even advertises the same.

Opened in 1921, the store was converted into a specialty grocery store and deli some years ago, and features meats and cheeses, as well as many other items, that are unlikely to appear on the counters of regular grocery stores.  It's featured here for its simple sign, as well as being a remnant of something that was once very common, a neighborhood store.

University Building, Denver Colorado.

What's depicted here is the smokestack of the University Building in Denver Colorado.

The University Building was built in 1910 as the A. C. Foster Building and was renamed in 1921 when it was donated to Denver University.  It contains many art deco embellishments.

A more recent embellishment to the building, which is now an apartment building, has been the painting of its smokestack as a No. 2 pencil, thereby playing on its name.

La Boheme, Denver Colorado.

This is a photograph of the mural on the side of La Boheme in Denver, which euphemistically calls itself a "gentleman's cabaret". By that it means, no doubt, something on the order of "strip club".

La Boheme, which means the female Bohemian in French, is located in what was once a pretty rough downtown Denver neighborhood which went through gentrification after Coors Field was constructed. The transformation in this area was remarkable and its still ongoing, Colorado's legalization of marijuana had reintroduced a feeling of decay into downtown once again.  At any rate, in spite of many old buildings being bought and converted into new upscale uses, and in spite of being located across the street from the downtown Embassy Suites, a nice Denver business hotel, La Boheme keeps on keeping on.

I can't recall this mural being there until just recently, so it's presumably a new addition.  Perhaps keeping in mind where it is, it's not shockingly skanky and is actually fairly well done.  It's placement resulted in a minor debate with my travel companions on whether it depicts Marilyn Monroe, Jenny McCarthy, or none of the above.  The first two choices would in some ways emphasize the tragic nature of the establishments purpose.  Anyhow, it's fairly well done except that the figures left hand, which isn't really visible in this photo, is quite meaty, making for an odd appearance.

Postscript

The image is in fact that of Marilyn Monroe.  I ran across it by accident elsewhere on the net.

Paleontologist Mural, Laramie Wyoming

Indian Mural, Laramie Wyoming

I know that this mural's image is taken from a photograph, but unfortunately I don't know who the photograph was of.  Should anyone recognize the subject, let us know who it is in the comments.

Cowgirls, Laramie Wyoming

Wyoming Scenes Mural. Laramie Wyoming

Another Laramie alley mural, this one featuring various scenes of Wyoming, both current and historical.

Tree Mural, Laramie Wyoming

We noted this mural a couple of days ago when the larger mural next to it was featured.  Here's a closure view.

The Black Fourteen, Laramie Wyoming Mural

The Black Fourteen were fourteen University of Wyoming football players who lost their positions on the football team in 1969 when they sought to wear black armbands during a scheduled football game between UW and BYU.

As noted in our entry on our companion blog, Some Gave All;

The action was intended to protest the policy of the Mormon church in excluding blacks from leadership roles in their church.  Coach Eaton, the UW football coach at the time, dismissed all fourteen players prior to the game, ending their football careers at UW and, at least in some cases, simply ending them entirely.

As also noted in that entry, which depicted a memorial in the UW Student Union, and which was posted in 2017:

The event was controversial at the time, and to a lesser degree, has remained so.  Generally, in most of Wyoming, Coach Eaton was supported, rather than the players, which doesn't mean that the players did not have support.  As time has gone on, however, views have changed and generally the players are regarded as heroes for their stand.  Views on Eaton are qualified, with some feeling he was in the wrong, and others feeling that he was between a rock and a hard place and acted as best as he could, even if that was not for the best.

It is indeed possible even now to see both sides of the dramatic event.  The players wanted to wear black armbands in protest of the Mormon's policy of not allowing blacks to be admitted to the Mormon priesthood and therefore also excluding them from positions of leadership in the Mormon church.  This policy was well know in much of Wyoming as the Mormon theology behind it, which held that blacks were descendant of an unnatural union on the part of Noah's son Cain, resulted in black human beings.  This was unlikely to be widely known, however, amongst blacks at the University of Wyoming, most of whom (but not all of which) came from outside of the state.  A week or so prior to the UW v. BYU game, however, Willie Black, a black doctoral candidate at UW who was not on the football team, learned of the policy.  Black was head of the Black Students Alliance and called for a protest.  The plan to wear armbands then developed.

The protest, therefore, came in the context of a civil rights vs. religious concepts background, a tough matter in any context.  To make worse, it also came during the late 60s which was a time of protest, and there had been one against the Vietnam War just days prior to the scheduled game. Following that, Eaton reminded his players of UW's policy against student athletes participating in any demonstration, a policy which raises its own civil liberties concern. The players went ahead with tehir plans and Eaton removed all of them from the team.

Looked at now, it remains easy to see why Eaton felt that he had to act, while also feeling that he acted much too harshly.  Not everyone agrees with this view by any means, however.  Many, but a declining number, still feel Eaton was right.  A much larger number feel he was definitely wrong.  Few hold a nuanced view like I've expressed.  Even those who felt that Eaton was right often admire the protesting players, however.

Anyway its looked at, the Black 14 are now a definite part of Wyoming's legacy as The Equality State, even if most of them were not from here (at least one, and maybe more, were).  This year at Wyoming History Day, a statewide high school history presentation competition, which had the theme of "taking a stand", they were the subject of one static display and two video presentations.  They may be more well remembered now than at any time since the late 1970s, and this memorial in the student union certainly contributes to that.

The mural is located in an alley in downtown Laramie.  As noted earlier in this series of posts, downtown Laramie has had a mural project and, in fact, most of the murals are located along the same alley over the course of several blocks.

Big Hollow Natural Foods, The Second Story Bookstore, Laramie Wyoming

This is a mural I was sure I'd posted before, but apparently have not.  One of a collection of murals in downtown Laramie, Wyoming.

Indeed, these photographs show two separate murals, as there is the tree mural, apparently a nocturne, behind the one that is principally featured here.

Oops

A couple of days ago I noted that I'd thought I'd taken some photos of murals in Laramie and was surprised they weren't posted here.

And, indeed I had.  I just didn't post them at the time.  So I'm going to go back and do that now, leading to the oddity that the last two mural topics are more recent than those which are about to follows.

Fish Mural, Laramie Wyoming

Trees and Hills Mural, Downtown Laramie, Wyoming.

There has been an extensive mural project in downtown Laramie Wyoming in recent years.  Indeed, I thought that I'd posted a set of photographs on Laramie murals before, and I'm pretty sure that I've taken a collection of them, but I can't see that I posted them.

This mural is a fanciful landscape featuring animated trees.

O'Fallon Museum, Baker Montana.

A mural on the side of of the O'Fallon Museum in Baker Montana.  Baker is in Fallon, not O'Fallon, County Montana, so presumably the "O" was dropped off of the name of Benjamin O'Fallon, after whom the county was named, at some point when Montana chose to honor the early Indian Agent and nephew of William Clark with a county name.

The building was originally the county jail and was built in 1916.

Natrona County Mural, Natrona County International Airport

A very nice mural, obviously put up before terrorist attacks made extra security necessary.

At one time the observation deck, from which the top photographs were taken, was a jet bridge for boarding large jets.  We don't have large jets at our airport anymore, so presumably that capability isn't needed at the present time.

Some Gave All: British Expeditionary Force Memorial, France

Some Gave All: British Expeditionary Force Memorial, France

British Expeditionary Force Memorial, France

The Bars of Baker Montana

The Corner Bar in Baker Montana.

This is a little off topic for here, as these aren't really examples of painted signs on buildings, but they are interesting in context.  These are bars on the main street of Baker Montana.

 Heiser's Bar in Baker Montana.

Baker is a town in far eastern Montana, nearly in North Dakota.  It's a long ways to Baker from everywhere and as a result its managed to retain the classic bar/grill/restaurant in strength that so many places have lost.  It's likely too far away for chains to locate in and therefore the old establishments keep on keeping on.

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Levee murals, Denver Colorado.

The City of Denver has revitalized Lower Downtown Denver ("LoDo") into an area which has become a hot district of the city.  Much of that revitalization involved redeveloping what had been an industrial area into a mixed residential urban district.

Everything depicted here, demonstrates that.

This area was once a very industrial area separating the Denver Heights from Downtown Denver, and it was all pretty gritty in some ways, although the Heights itself had been residential throughout.  Now, it's all redone.

Included in the redoing were these efforts at murals.  I can't say I regard them as a success, frankly, but the project is ongoing.