Street Artist Inspires Too Much Enthusiasm

The owners of a small South End gallery say they had the best of intentions when they commissioned a famous and often mischievous street artist to install a massive political mural on a construction wall lining one of the artiest strips of the South End.

The mural, 13 feet high and nearly a block long, features multiple composite portraits of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln, their faces melded together in a rainbow of colors. It is meant, the gallery said, to inspire dialogue.

That it did. The morning after artist Ron English and his band of volunteers finished the mural, "Abraham Obama," it stirred a tempest in this insular arts community, though it had nothing to do with Lincoln, Obama or English himself.

Rather, residents, business owners, and even fellow gallery owners expressed frustration, angst, and anger over the way some English enthusiasts descended upon the city, plastering windows, telephone polls, and other surfaces with miniature movie posters meant to advertise the massive exhibit.

By yesterday, the sponsors of the exhibit, Gallery XIV, got a call from Boston police, apparently prompted by a complaint by the nearby Boston Center for the Arts, where two unauthorized posters were plastered.

"My best alibi and the truth is that I had no idea what we were getting into," said Will Kerr, director of exhibition sponsor Gallery XIV. "We were just interested in the installation on Thayer Street, which is an incredible work of art. I'm really trying to be a good neighbor and do damage control."

Kerr said the gallery made sure the exhibition was installed legally last week with permission from the building owner, but gallery owners apparently underestimated the fervor of the artist's fans. The mural is the feature piece of a street art exhibition called "a politic," scheduled to run through Oct. 4. They marketed it as "a legal billboard," by an artist more popular for illegal billboards in cities from New York to Amsterdam.

English's presence drew interest from some of his fans accustomed to the mischievous nature of his street art. They heard about the planned Boston installation through blogs.

English made a name for himself by co-opting corporate billboards in New York City and pasting over them with his own billboards that lampooned corporate excess, war, and other hot-button topics. His website, popaganda.com, displays a gallery of illegal billboards he has erected.

"We had people in their early 20s who drove to Boston overnight from Maine and Vermont," said Kerr. "After the installation was done, Ron English got into signing posters, and they gave away posters to everyone at the party."

English's fans were apparently so enamored of his work Wednesday night that they snapped up autographed prints of the image and pasted them, illegally, on several buildings in the South End.

July 08, 2008