When the Seaboard Rail Systems built a retaining wall around a new piggyback facility in 1986, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs selected local artists to create large ceramic mosaic installations depicting life in Cabbagetown & Reynoldstown. The new facility was one of many promises to return vitality to the area after the closure of the Fulton Cotton Mill circa 1977. After an unsuccessful project installing murals inside Krog Tunnel (September 2001), Cabbagetown activists petitioned City of Atlanta officials to protect freedom of expression inside the Krog Tunnel.
The work of Cabbagetown neighbors resulted in suspended citations, and decriminalized the tunnel for unsolicited painting as a “Free Wall”. In 2003, the neighborhood hired local mural artist Totem to paint the tunnel’s south entrance, and invited local writers to up the ante in the tunnel.
After some wack nuisance vandalism (toy tagging of cars, mailboxes, & historically black churches) in 2008, Cabbagetown Initiative 501c3 formed the Wallkeepers Committee to energize public spaces, and enhance pedestrian experiences. Cabbagetown negotiated control of landscaping and maintenance from CSX Transportation, which had been operating on an unreliable schedule, allowing planting to grow uncontrollably, and haphazardly buffing.
By 2012, Cabbagetown partnered with Monica Campana of Living Walls Conference, for two inaugural murals (La Pandilla & Trek Matthews) along Wylie Street, and began engaging other artists to create work for Wylie Street. In 2014, Peter Ferrari of Forward Warrior, succeeded Sam Parker as curator for the surface from Carroll to Pearl Street.
Community leaders continue to nurture art & promote access both in Krog and on Wylie.
In 2019, Arthur Rudick of StreetArtMap.org, a retired engineer who tracks & documents murals in Atlanta, proposed a celebration in honor of Atlanta reaching one thousand murals. ATL1000 was formed as a media campaign awareness under the advice and consultation of local arts leaders, in hopes of thanking Atlanta’s muralists and promoting the city itself as an arts destination.
In addition to supporting a public process for a new mural at Krog Street, ATL1000 will also include a conventional and social media campaign, display artwork by Atlanta’s muralists on digital billboards, offer street art walking tours, and the Goddess Glow installation in cooperation with PowerHaus Creative. An Artist Appreciation party, and a Calendar of Autumn mural events is planned, but likely postponed due to COVID-19.
blah blah blah – history of care
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