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Monday, May 21, 2012

Two-Block Radius / Visual Art The Dissolution of the John T. Williams Mural Needs a Documenter

Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 1:21 PM

Photo by Sacha Noelle Peet
The mural as of Saturday evening.

It was up for so many months that No Touching Ground's touching John T. Williams memorial mural on 11th Street between Pike and Pine seemed like it would stay forever—even while we all knew it couldn't.

But that time came sooner than expected. On Friday night, according to the Poster Giant employee who works that block, Keith (he asked not to provide his full name), a mohawked man began tearing it down. Keith "asked him not to touch it, but the guy wouldn't listen and Keith's been harassed a lot lately so he didn't want to get into a confrontation," Poster Giant spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell said in an email.

The email also contained photographs that demonstrated that Keith had repaired the mural in April. He wrote in the email with the pictures, dated April 30, "The other day someone asked if I'd fix it while putting up 11th and Pine, they said it would mean a lot to a lot of people, so I did. A way of giving back too [sic] the community. My good deed for the year."

Artist Emily Pothast wrote a response to this weekend's defacement—although the tearing conspicuously spares the face of John T. Williams—on Facebook.

"It's still beautiful, and to me it will continue to be beautiful even when it is just a memory of what used to be in this spot for some lovely fleeting moments before succumbing to the tides, as we all must grow comfortable with doing eventually..."

She added: "someone should take a picture of this spot from the same place every day and make a stop motion animation of the process of its eventual destruction."

That is a really good idea. Is anybody up for an easy, awesome, civic project? Couldn't we also crowd-source it and make it an interactive Bing map thing?

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Separated at birth:

http://fieldmuseum.org/happening/exhibit…

?

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on May 21, 2012 at 1:25 PM

It was placed there in large part to draw the attention of the most attentive meda outlet in town: you guys at the Stranger, whose windows face it. If nobody else steps up, maybe you guys could put your noggns together and aim a camera out your window at it to do the thing yourselves? Just sayin.

Posted by gloomy gus on May 21, 2012 at 1:30 PM

Poster Giant and taggers should be locked in a cage with one bowl of food and some sharp knives.

Just saying.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on May 21, 2012 at 1:52 PM

Some enterprising alt news source, like say the Seattle Weekly, should set up cameras across the street to document this. If not them, who?

Posted by raku on May 21, 2012 at 1:58 PM

Once i saw like 6 cops hanging out in front of that mural, yuckin it up and drinking coffee. It was like john t williams was the water cooler and everyones jokes that day were extra funny. I tripped over my self trying to get a photo but they disappeared in to a door in the wall before i could take it.

Posted by ameliamaris on May 21, 2012 at 2:07 PM