Artist brightens community with mural on auto repair shop ahead of Baltimore's Artscape
BALTIMORE - Artscape – one of the nation's largest free outdoor arts festivals -- returns to Baltimore in less than a month.
WJZ is a proud media sponsor of the Artscape this year.
The festival highlights Baltimore as a creative and cultural hub, inspiring people to see the beauty in even the most unexpected places.
Ahead of the festival, a local artist is using her talent to brighten a once bleak corner of Baltimore's North Station neighborhood.
Community artist and muralist, Jaz Erenberg, is transforming this auto repair shop on North Charles Street into a work of art.
"The vision for this is just to transport people to a place where they can meditate on the good things about Baltimore," said Erenberg.
It's a work of art that invites people to shift their perspective.
"To think about how they talk about Baltimore, how they see Baltimore," said Erenberg. "All of these stairways are different passages that people have taken throughout life, and it also talks about how Baltimore is the way it is now and really shines a light on the creativity that we have here."
The piece is called Portals and Passageways. It's the first phase of what will be a seven-mural installation in Baltimore's Station North neighborhood for the artscape festival. The Mayor's senior advisor for arts and culture, Tonya Miller Hall, said this year Artscape has expanded to include station north for the first time.
"We thought, 'how can we use the festival as a vehicle to really bring change and social impact to the community' and so this mural project is the start of that," Hall said.
As an experienced muralist, Erenberg said she has seen first-hand how public art uplifts a community -- by helping people see the beauty in their surroundings and giving them a new sense of ownership over a space.
"They get to see their story be told on such a public stage and at such a large scale. They really tend to clean up more in the neighborhood and you see behaviors really change about stewardship of that space," said Erenberg.
Artscape runs September 22 to September 24. More information on the festival here: https://www.artscape.org/
