Sep 24, 2007

Kelly Towles Grate Project This Week!

The Grate Project – A new series of large-scale public paintings by Kelly Towles

Kelly Towles has will be creating some great new monuments on 14th street.

September 15 -16: One World Fitness
September 22-23: Blagden Alley
September 29-30: The Black Cat


Watch him as the work comes together and join him Tuesday, October 23rd Backstage at the Blackcat to celebrate the project's completion.

FROM THE ARTIST:
Funded by the Creative Community Initiative of the Community Foundation, The Grate Project -created by DC based artist Kelly Towles and presented by Transformer this September 2007 - features a new series of public mural paintings at three different business locations within and near the 14th Street Arts Corridor. Seeking to create large scale paintings that will exist in the public realm, Kelly Towles is creating murals that will completely cover the roll-down security grates at One World Fitness, outside the artist studios at 926 N Street in Blagden Alley, and at the Black Cat nightclub. Re-vitalizing these grates into dynamic contemporary artworks, The Grate Project is intended to further dialogue about the nature of street art and public art work, while enhancing DC’s street-scapes.

A self-described military brat, Towles “got started as a kid with drawing, comic books, cartoons, and stuff like that...” He became a graffiti artist in high-school, eventually earning a degree in Studio Art from the University of Maryland before pursuing a career as an artist. Already an accomplished artist currently represented by Adamson Gallery, Towles continues to work in grafitti because he enjoys the direct engagement with the community afforded by this renegade form of public art. “I like that anybody can sit there and tell you what they think of your graffiti....For me, grafitti is art and also a vocabulary.”

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