Artists savor brush with immortality

Populist art took over for garbage and graffiti Saturday under the railroad viaduct at Third and Ash, where hundreds of volunteers created the city’s newest People’s Gallery.

The concrete walls along the sidewalks under the railroad crossing were divided into hundreds of squares, and each volunteer artist filled one in. Kids painted unicorns and rabbits, adults painted bridge scenes and roses, and Lance Sinnema painted Bob, a “mutant tomato” with horns and three eyes.

“It’s a great community thing,” Sinnema said, pointing to the wide variety of ages involved and the promise of the project to help undercut graffiti and general griminess at the viaduct.

The city has several such galleries around town, and city arts director Karen Mobley said they help “cover up ugliness.”

It helps people develop a sense of ownership in that area of the community, she said. “But I also think that for a lot of the people that do this it really matters. It’s life-changing in some way.”

Mobley said she’d heard from a recent art school graduate who said she was inspired to pursue art while volunteering at a People’s Gallery in 2000. The obituary of a Spokane woman who died recently noted how she cherished being able to paint a plate of spaghetti at the gallery by Interplayers.

The community mural is part of an effort by the Community Assembly, a group comprised of neighborhood volunteers, to combat graffiti.

On Saturday, several hundred people lined both sides of Third Avenue under the viaduct. Sinnema was there with friends, including Scott Kolbo, who painted an image of a bearded man sunk partway into the ground.

“I call him ‘Heavy Man,’ ” said Kolbo, who’s a Spokane artist.

A few yards down the wall, 10-year-old Joshua Harris was working on a painting of the Space Needle. Across Third, Connor Abbott, 9, started work on his own creation.

“I’m thinking about painting part crescent moon and part sun, with the moon sleeping while the sun is awake,” Abbott said.

He said it was a design of his own invention. “I just thought it up,” he said. “I’m one of those kids who has one of those really bright imaginations.”