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One of the greatest things about Winston-Salem, visually speaking, is that it looks like a city: a pawn shop and a boutique theater, performance halls and taverns, the best skyline in the Triad and, everywhere in town, cool murals painted on brick and concrete canvases.
Cool cities have cool murals, but residents of High Point and Greensboro have a dearth of this kind of public art (see this week’s art story on page 24 for an example of a new one in High Point, or visit Common Grounds in Greensboro to see Patch Whisky’s latest before it gets scraped off).
There are movements afoot to bring more murals to the cities of Guilford County, and I think it just might work.
I had a conversation with Loring Mortensen of the Weatherspoon Art Museum over the weekend in which he suggested a Mural Month, during which a dozen or so artists would put up signature pieces on some of the available surfaces around Greensboro, giving the city a chance to catch up with its neighbor to the west.
They’re doing it every year in Richmond. Charleston is covered in murals. Philadelphia has almost 3,000 of them, the most in the United States. I think Greensboro and High Point could make do with a couple dozen more, starting with the façade of the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, which is just begging for some art.
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Sadly it didn’t work in High Point. The murals came, but the people didn’t.