Early in Manuel Ramirez’s role as the vice president of creative direction for the non-profit Positive Street Art (PSA), he came across a couple teenagers tagging a wall on a bridge underpass. Ramirez stopped to watch and was actually able to admire the teens’ handiwork, given his own background growing up in Brooklyn doing his own public “art.” “The next day, I saw that one of our own walls had been tagged, and with the same signatures of the kids I saw,” he explains in his organization’s downtown Nashua office. “They also wrote ‘This is not art’ on our mural.”

The moment was a turning point for Ramirez, as the object of PSA was to both change the attitudes that the public has about graffiti, but also to provide a safe and creative outlet for street artists to show their skill without vandalizing property. “Just because it’s vandalism, doesn’t mean it’s not art,” Ramirez says. “If we could just guide these kids away from destroying property and get them to express themselves in a safe way and safe place, then maybe we can lessen the public’s concern as well.”

The organization was started in 2012 by Ramirez and the group’s president, Cecilia Ulibarri, with the express purpose of finding what’s called a Free Wall in the city of Nashua, a place where graffiti artists could focus their skills without damaging property. “We wanted this to be a project that highlighted the positive sides of graffiti, that’s how the name came about,” he says.

Manuel Ramirez and the Gratitude Wall, Positive Street Art

But after reaching out to some crowd-sourcing think tanks, PSA realized they had something a bit bigger on their hands. The local Dunkin’ Donuts owner handed over a huge wall that faced some railroad tracks, along with a check for $1,000. Positive Street Art was on its way. The mayor and several aldermen got on board, and pretty soon PSA was fielding calls from all around the city from businesses that wanted murals on their property. Now, PSA has created and maintains about 30 walls throughout the city and a couple in surrounding towns. And when a new request comes in, they have a corral of artists that can either bid on or sometimes get assigned the work.

And those Free Walls they originally wanted? The city now has two, one a beginning artist wall and one a more advanced wall where graffiti artists can ply their trade. The group’s most recent project, the Gratitude Wall, is their largest yet, 100 feet long on the side of a retailer that sells rugs. Ramirez said they reached out to the community for positives words or phrases—such as loyalty, strength, peace, etc.—and now those words glow in the beams of a bright yellow sun. As we stood there in front of the mural talking, a middle-aged woman in a minivan rolled by, stuck her head out the window and asked if one of us was the artist. I pointed to Ramirez. “This is wonderful,” she says. “Thank you! So much better than looking at an ugly wall.”

Manuel Ramirez–vice president of creative development, Positive Street Art
Nashua, New Hampshire
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The post #TakeAction: Changing Perspectives on Graffiti appeared first on Take Magazine.

Three years ago, Jerry Beck took a drive with his young daughter through New Hampshire and passed a sign for Ruggles Mine in Grafton. His daughter shrugged, but Beck convinced her to check it out. Armed with a pail and hammer for rock collecting, they emerged from a tunnel into the expansive cavern of the now-defunct mica mine. “We just thought this was the coolest place we had ever seen,” he says today.

Beck, who specializes in bringing art to unique and forgotten spaces, immediately envisioned a show there. Ruggles Mine has since closed and gone up for sale. In November, Beck got permission to stage an exhibition of musicians, sculpture, light and sound installations, video, poetry-readings and performances throughout the rock-framed environment.

He now hopes The Revolving Museum, the artistic-event organization he founded in 1984, will purchase the mine and turn it into a destination—an experimental and interactive theme park of visual creations woven together “so that your imagination is exploding wherever you look,” he says. To that end, he and TRM are planning another Ruggles Mine exhibition and fundraiser in late summer or fall.

But that’s not all Beck has planned for New Hampshire. He also has partnered with City Arts Nashua to help revitalize its downtown with public art. The “Comeback Kitchen Table” show will launch in May to call attention to the vanishing custom of families gathering for meals and conversation—“what used to be the heart and soul of family life,” Beck says.

Comeback Kitchen Table | Revolving Museum Director Jerry Beck and City Arts Nashua Board President Kathy Hersh

More than 1,000 artists are working on 10 projects for the show. An alternative high school has created a Jean-Michel Basquiat-themed installation with an anti-drug message. “It will hopefully be a catalyst for people to explore the tables, sitting down, talking,” Beck says of the show.

The idea grew out of Beck’s nostalgia for his own family time spent around the kitchen table when he was a kid, laughing and telling stories. Today, trying to draw his 10-year-old daughter’s attention away from her digital screen is a challenge, he says.

An art major at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Beck spent a semester in London, charmed more by the punk rock scene than Renaissance painting. Back in Florida, he and some fellow art students launched a series of public art projects in empty buildings and other forsaken sites. They called themselves SARTists—Student Artists Reshaping Tallahassee.

In 1983, Beck started graduate school in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. He founded The Revolving Museum soon after with “The Little Train That Could .. Show” in an abandoned city rail yard. The old train cars were turned into gallery space and performance stages. On “hobo night,” homeless participants told stories. Another early TRM show took over an old Civil War fort on Georges Island in Boston harbor.

Each of Beck’s efforts seeks to connect communities with the creative work in their midst, a goal all the more relevant during this time of upheaval, he says. “We’re in a cultural revolution right now,” Beck says. “And the arts—as they always have—need to be at the forefront.”

The Revolving Museum – Jerry Beck, founder and artistic director
Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Ruggles Mine –  Grafton, New Hampshire

Comeback Kitchen Table exhibition in Nashua, New Hampshire
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Top photo Ruggles Mine Show, Revolving Museum

The post Of Abandoned Mines and Kitchen Tables appeared first on Take Magazine.