Main Street Wadsworth is excited to announce its 10th and 11th downtown art murals: “Music is the healing force”. The murals will be painted now through the end of October, and the artists have invited the entire community to take part in the painting!Main Street Wadsworth issued a Call to Artists earlier this year and the volunteer team selected West Palm Beach, Florida-based muralists Jhonattan and Samantha Arango, who work under the alias Anón, to paint one mural on two downtown walls: 131 College Street (B.A. Schrock Financial Group) and 124 N. Lyman Street (Frontier Communications).
The artists’ website, www.artofanon.com, states “As Anón, Jhonattan and Samantha create highly organic murals and paper art using only the rigid shapes of triangles. Their work—which often includes portraiture and imagined landscapes—is an exploration into the subject of interconnection, and rudimentarily mimics the function of triangles as the most fundamental fabric of reality. With often thousands of triangles to tell the story, it becomes apparent to see how each piece, regardless of color and size, is an integral part of the whole.”
Their inspiration takes root in a developing understanding of the desire to attain happiness as a human commonality. With this base, triangles help them narrate intricately woven stories on the subject of peace, harmony, and unconditional love. Their work is an ode to the threads that connect all 7.8 billion people to each other and everything else in existence.
Besides making solo murals, they work with a community format that allows for audiences to paint murals together. Through this exploration they have facilitated projects where hundreds of spectators become the artists, using art as an agent for peaceful community building.
“The two murals work together to create a visual narrative that speaks to the interconnection of all things, which is the underlying tone of our work; of past, present and future, of the surrounding environment of what was and what is to come” stated artist Samantha Arango. “The artworks are meant to uplift the viewer, and play with the idea of visual sound, as well as nod to the history of the surrounding area and visually expand into the current local flora and fauna. It is a celebration of what was and what is to come. We are grateful to be a part of Wadsworth’s future.”
“I love everything about the process of creating a mural, but the community portion has to be one of my favorites” stated artist Jhonattan Arango. “Anyone can do it. From a 2-year-old to an 80-year-old, if you can hold a brush, you can do it. There’s something really beautiful about co-creating a mural, having something that everyone works together on. And historically speaking, with some of these older community murals, people remember exactly what triangle they painted. It’s sort of this mental real estate. You get to keep it.”
The Community Paint Events will be held at 131 College Street on Friday, Oct. 7 from 5-8 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 8 from 9 a.m. to noon where all ages are invited to pick up a brush and paint a section of the mural, no art experience necessary.The community paint events are free and open to all; no registration required.
Anón’s two downtown Wadsworth murals are expected to be finished during the month of October.
