Durham NC Street Art: Decorative Downtown

by Julie Tetel Andresen | June 30, 2020 |

In my Five Questions Series I interview writers and offer them a platform for their work. It now seems appropriate to also offer space to visual artists. Over the past few weeks, the boarded-up store fronts in my town have turned into an outdoor art show. I now live in the midst of wonderful Durham NC Street Art.

Title image: murals on West Chapel Hill Street, downtown Durham.

Durham NC Street Art

This Black Lives Matter / No Justice No Peace mural is at Five Points. It is near the corner of West Chapel Hill Street and Morris.

Wade H. Williams, Artist At Large, painted it. I hope to feature his work soon in my Five Questions series.

Next to it, also on West Chapel Hill Street is this SpiritHouse mural:

SpiritHouse, according to its website, is a “multigenerational Black women-led cultural organizing tribe.” Through art, culture and media it supports communities impacted by racism and poverty, gender inequity, criminalization and incarceration.

Speaking of prisons, if you’d like to donate a book to the NC Women’s Prison, check out the wish list sponsored by The Regulator Bookshop.

On Main Street is Anthony Patterson‘s illustration of a James Baldwin quote:

Anthony Patterson is a fellow at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. He is the 2019-2020 Emerging Documentary Artist. He is the artist who created The Black on Black Project “Full Circle.”

Also Main Street is work by Kiara Sanders.

Durham NC Street Art and Juneteenth

On Friday the 19th Durham street art literally took to the street. I arrived at the Durham Police Department at about 5:30. It started to sprinkle then rain after which it cleared up. The painters kept at it.

From my angle it was difficult to tell what word(s) they were painting. So naturally I asked and discovered that it was only one word: Defund followed by an arrow pointing toward the police station.