Alley Crawl
Joe’s Smoke
Shop Mural
By Caroline Losneck
For those of you who like to snoop around
Portland’s alleys and one-way streets, there is
new-ish destination on Avon Street to tag to your
to-do list. The mural on the eastern wall of Joe’s
Smoke Shop at 665 Congress Street is the
brainchild of Portland artists Jeff Griecci and Ryan
Adams, and the owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop
(brothers Mike, Stephen, and David Discatio). It
depicts a historical snapshot of Portland, as it
looked when Joe Discatio first purchased the
building on August 12, 1945. Joe is 96 years old
now, and although he still owns the building, he
hasn’t seen the mural yet. The mural’s black and
white skyline runs the length of the building, and
graffiti-inspired art is splashed on top, and is a
unique mishmash of styles ranging from trompe-l’
oeil and graffiti, with a dose of broken window
theory.
The owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop commissioned
the project, and the final design is a collaboration
between the artists and the owners. Looking at the
mural is like gazing back in time on the Congress
Street of the past, when it used to have more
houses, buildings, and the St. Steven’s Church,
before the “urban renewal” program created more
parking lots and concrete. The mural is a much-
welcomed infusion of life to an area that has seen
some growth (such as the new building in the
former USM dorms at 645 Congress Street, Local
Sprouts, Princess Nail & Salon, Green Hand
Books, Coast City Comics, and Boda) but also its
fair share of vacant spaces and buildings (such as
the brick building across the street from Joe’s
owned by Roxanne Quimby, and the closure of
Evangeline and Cunningham Books in Longfellow
Square in 2010.)
Artist Jeff Griecci grew up in Massachusetts
and has lived in Portland since 2007, when he
started college at USM. He has a number of films
and projects already under his belt, including six
short films. His most recent project, A Bell in the
Yard, is a short horror film set in the mid-1800’s
that was made for Portland’s Damnationland
project. The mural is Griecci’s first commissioned
work in Portland. He became interested in the
trompe l’oeil style (French for ‘deceive the eye’, a
technique that creates an optical illusion that
objects are in three dimensions) while he was on a
trip to Italy. He decided to incorporate some
elements of the style into the mural.
Ryan Adams was born and raised in Portland,
and his work can been seen throughout Portland,
in the form of commissioned murals, including a
50- foot by 10-foot mural inside Binga’s Stadium,
the front signage of Binga’s, the murals at Nosh
Kitchen Bar, the Novare Res outdoor deck, and a
large mural at Bruno’s Restaurant & Tavern on
Allen Avenue.
If you are looking for a good reason to visit Joe’
s Smoke Shop, or the Longfellow Square area in
general, now is your chance. It’s likely that the
mural will look even cooler when the drifting snow
starts to pile up underneath and creates a sort of
natural framing of the piece. Then again, it’ll look
great when the snow melts, too.
For more information about Ryan Adams’ visit www.
flicker.com/photos/radams207
Fore more information about Jeff Griecci’s work
visit http://vimeo.com/mintfilms
The Interview
Q: How did the mural project on Joe’
s Smoke Shop come about?
JG: “In the end of August 2010, a good friend
who works at Joe’s came to me and said that the
owners were complaining about having to repaint
the walls due to graffiti. Joe’s was interested in a
mural, so our friend Meghan who works at Joe’s
approached us and asked if we would be
interested in painting a mural. We met with the
owners and discussed what they were looking and
what they wanted. They originally had very
ambiguous ideas. They wanted city portraits of
their corner of Congress Street, where Joe’s was
originally located, and of the church that used to
be where the parking lot now is. The congregation
evaporated and it lost income and so they
eventually demolished the church there. Joe’s
used to be right next to the church, in a little
building that was there. What is now Joe’s Smoke
Shop was a shoe shining parlor back then. When
Joe’s Smoke Shop moved to the bigger building,
they moved the shoe shining business to the
back.”
MD: “Our grandfather (Joe) said ‘Do what you
gotta’ do.’ He’s 96 years old now.”
Q: How long did the entire process
take, from early idea stage, to
meeting stage, to the completion of
the wall?
JG: “When Ryan and I started the project, we
talked to the owners of Joe’s and their family and
their customers, and we learned quickly that
everyone had a huge story to tell about the history
of Portland and it was so fascinating! So, we spent
that first week just listening to the stories and
asking a lot of questions.”
“Around mid September 2010, I set up a meeting
with Ryan. We started talking to Joe’s and made
copies of the old photos of buildings they gave to
us. Then we sketched our ideas on to the copies
of the photos. Joe’s originally wanted the whole
exterior of their building painted with murals. They
wanted accurate old city scenes. The Trelawny
Building and the old church are both in the mural.
The owners also talked about doing portrait of the
original Joe, and a portrait of the car Joe owned,
and incorporating a shoeshine scene into it.”
“The funny thing about this project is that Joe’s is
owned by four brothers. Ryan and I got together
and figured things out and the plan got shifted to
doing one section at a time. The other brothers
were iffy about it, and there was some
disagreement among the brothers, so the plans
kept changing whoever we spoke to. But Ryan and
I sketched up what the wall would look like, they
gave the go ahead with a couple of minor
changes, and we got started. Because of the
weather, it took about three weeks to do, working
around our schedules. We painted the mural
portraits of the city first, from the historical photos
that the owners of Joe’s had supplied. We painted
both ends of the mural first, working inward.”
Q: Do you consider your piece to be
a mural? Street art? Graffiti? Other?
What are the distinctions and are
they important to you?
JG: “The piece is a mural; maybe it’s graffiti-
inspired, but not actually graffiti. I’d call it a mural.
Primarily, the purpose of the piece was to keep
graffiti off the walls. We figured that the likeliness
of graffiti being painted over the mural would be
greatly reduced if we incorporated some form of
graffiti inspired art into it. If it were just a city
scene, it would be respected differently. In that
community, it is a great disrespect to go over
people’s work. It still happens, but it’s something
you don’t do, and it’s not well respected. The
whole idea is if you having a graffiti problem, it is
important to incorporate some kind of graffiti-
inspired work into it. It needs to be there.”
Q: Can you talk about the reaction, if
any, to your piece that passers-by
had while you were working on it?
JG: “When we started the center piece (the graffiti-
influenced section) of the mural, I noticed a
marked change in the comments that people made
when they stopped to look. People started to say
things like, ‘I really like both ends of the building…’
then walk away. There were a couple times when I
asked them, ‘Why don’t you like the mural part in
the middle?’ The answer was usually ‘I don’t know
what it is.’ So I wonder do they not like it because
they don’t understand it?”
JG: “A lady stopped and asked if we were there
legally, while I was standing up on a milk crate,
with my respirator, gloves, music and paint can.
After I told her that we were there legally, she
walked inside and asked the owners of Joe’s. They
said, “Yes, we are paying him to do it! Others
joked if we had permission. I don’t think I would be
out here on a Sunday afternoon and if it wasn’t ok!
I was writing Joe’s Smoke shop on the side of the
building! When people see an aerosol can, it’s a
completing different thing. If I had been holding a
brush and bucket, I would have been ok. Maybe if
people can’t see your face, they don’t understand
and get nervous? Every time I shook a can,
people across the street would literally stop and
look over. But overall, passers by were stopping
all the time. The owners were coming out and
complimenting us all the time.”
MD: “When they were doing it, everyone was
talking about it. The people next door love it! It
really looks better than it did before. If you saw the
picture, it looks pretty much the same!”
Q: How did you paint the piece?
JG: “The entire piece was done using aerosol
paint, except for some of the background black
and white, which we rolled out with a bucket and a
roller.”
Q: Does it have a title?
JG: “Not yet.”
Q: Was this project fun to you to be
part of? What is the long-term plan
and does it require any maintenance?
JG: “I had a lot of fun dong it. The only drawback
was the weather. I wish we had been asked to do it
in June. You can only be out there so long until
the aerosol stops working. Right now, the plan is
to wait until the spring, when we plan to re-meet
with the owners to see if they want us to do more.
Painting the whole building is still a possibility.”
MD: “We have a picture of our grandfather Joe,
standing on newspapers in the store. We were
thinking of putting a portrait of him on the back
wall of the building. We are going around the back
of the building, and the only reason we stopped
was it got too cold. We will go around the back,
for sure, but have to wait until the spring.”
Q: How long do you anticipate it will
stay in place?
JG: “Overall, it has been received very well. We
have had a lot more positive feedback than not.
As long as Joe’s likes it, it will stay there for a long
time. I bet it will last a long time without being
touched by taggers. Ryan and I thought the mural
would be here for a while, we designed it with the
idea that it would last and we wanted it to look
right.”
Q: What are some of the issues or
things that the general public might
not know about the creation of art
like this that you want them to know
about?
JG: “I guess I’d want them to be open minded
about it and to really look at it and consider what
was there before, and what is there now, and keep
that in mind. Don’t go with your first 30-second
judgment. We spent a lot of time working on the
mural, out in the cold. There were days when I
worked on it from nine in the morning until the
streetlights came on. Although it might not be what
people understand and appreciate, we can’t
please everybody. It was designed for a purpose,
not only for aesthetics. It was designed to appeal
to a broad range; we were trying to appease a lot
a people.”
“One of the most interesting things to me was that
we painted the buildings first, and during that time,
the comments came from a ten year kid all the way
to a 75 year old woman. They were all good.
When we did the centerpieces, only a small
section of the people passing by changed their
comments, and they were our parent’s and
grandparent’s age. It seemed like a few people
thought wow, it still looks great, but the graffiti-
inspired part was shunned, almost. It seems like
the kids are open-minded to the whole aspect of
the piece. Why isn’t the older generation? And a
lot of the regulars feel ownership of Joe’s, and
when they saw something happening to their spot,
maybe they saw us as bringing new stuff into this
place they’ve grown up getting a soda pop in and
now there is this new kind of thing.”
“My parents and grandparents have seen it. They
love it. My parents don’t understand it, but maybe
because I am their son, they are open to it. When
my dad saw it and realized I was getting paid for it,
he was more open to it!”
RA: “It is hard to take the process of creating a
mural, that energy, and move it into a gallery. It’s
like seeing a tiger in the zoo. It’s cool, but a
different experience to see it in the wild. Murals
are part of the scenery, in the environment, it is
the most effective outdoors.”
Q: Does the commoditization of
street art/graffiti belong in this
conversation? How do you feel
about the attitude present in the
graffiti world suggesting that if
property owners/cities encourage
graffiti or preserve it, are they
neutering it somehow?
JG: “A lot of people think there is a purity to doing
this kind of art and not getting paid to do it. I did
the mural because I love painting and thought it
would reach a lot of people, not to make rent. If
you can do it and still stay true to it, than it’s a
good thing. You are going to get judged no matter
if you get paid to do art or not. You can do both if
you have a healthy balance.”
Q: Should the City of Portland and/or
businesses do more to encourage
this type of work?
JG: “It’s always good to see more murals around
town. I really appreciate architecture in this town
so I think that a lot of the beautiful old buildings
don’t need anything more added to them. But if it’s
a big concrete wall, why not put some color on it?
Any place that utilizes the talent that’s in this town
is good. In the case of the oil tankers in South
Portland, why on earth would they commission
artist from across the globe? Maybe they want to
get big names from out of state, but why they
wouldn’t commission any of the talented local
people to do the painting, I’ll never understand.”
MD: “I would encourage other businesses to do
this.”
RA: “It’s great that some places are allowing us to
do this kind of thing. Maine artworks can focus on
Maine landscapes, and art made only for tourists.
To see businesses in Maine doing this does more
for the art and culture in Portland. It’s great for the
city, and it’s something new to add to the Maine
arts.”
Q: Who are some of your influences
and artists, thinkers, writers that you
admire?
JG: “My influences for the mural for the buildings
we painted come partially from when I was in Italy
in the Fall and early Winter of 2009, and a lot of
the buildings I saw there had been painted with
faux bricks and I used those techniques when we
were painting the mural. The middle part was
influenced by graffiti in Boston and Portland the
early 90’s and 2000’s.”
Q: What did you learn while working
on this project?
JG: “I learned tons of history about Joe’s that I didn’
t know. I didn’t realize how rich the history of that
place is. Although there is an eclectic crew in that
neighborhood, they still have regulars and people
who care about their places and spots. They care
about it as much as people in the West End or
East End care about their neighborhoods.”
Q: How was it to collaborate with
somebody on such a large piece?
JG: “Ryan is really knowledgeable, flexible, and
nice. This was the first time I worked with him on
that scale and size. We were literally working hand-
over-hand doing sections of the mural. And there
were other parts where we worked on separate
buildings at a time. We definitely got closer. When
we got halfway through the project, I left for the
night, and thought about how well we were getting
along. I lucked out! It was nice it worked out that
way. I look forward to going back with Ryan in the
spring to see what the next step is or doing this
kind of work with him in the future.”
RA: “I have collaborated with people before and it
was a lot of fun working with Jeff.”
Q: Is there anything else you’d like
to mention or add?
JG: “It was humbling and nice to know that there
are so many people in the area that are excited
and appreciate that we do this kind of work.”
Joe’s Smoke
Shop Mural
By Caroline Losneck
For those of you who like to snoop around
Portland’s alleys and one-way streets, there is
new-ish destination on Avon Street to tag to your
to-do list. The mural on the eastern wall of Joe’s
Smoke Shop at 665 Congress Street is the
brainchild of Portland artists Jeff Griecci and Ryan
Adams, and the owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop
(brothers Mike, Stephen, and David Discatio). It
depicts a historical snapshot of Portland, as it
looked when Joe Discatio first purchased the
building on August 12, 1945. Joe is 96 years old
now, and although he still owns the building, he
hasn’t seen the mural yet. The mural’s black and
white skyline runs the length of the building, and
graffiti-inspired art is splashed on top, and is a
unique mishmash of styles ranging from trompe-l’
oeil and graffiti, with a dose of broken window
theory.
The owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop commissioned
the project, and the final design is a collaboration
between the artists and the owners. Looking at the
mural is like gazing back in time on the Congress
Street of the past, when it used to have more
houses, buildings, and the St. Steven’s Church,
before the “urban renewal” program created more
parking lots and concrete. The mural is a much-
welcomed infusion of life to an area that has seen
some growth (such as the new building in the
former USM dorms at 645 Congress Street, Local
Sprouts, Princess Nail & Salon, Green Hand
Books, Coast City Comics, and Boda) but also its
fair share of vacant spaces and buildings (such as
the brick building across the street from Joe’s
owned by Roxanne Quimby, and the closure of
Evangeline and Cunningham Books in Longfellow
Square in 2010.)
Artist Jeff Griecci grew up in Massachusetts
and has lived in Portland since 2007, when he
started college at USM. He has a number of films
and projects already under his belt, including six
short films. His most recent project, A Bell in the
Yard, is a short horror film set in the mid-1800’s
that was made for Portland’s Damnationland
project. The mural is Griecci’s first commissioned
work in Portland. He became interested in the
trompe l’oeil style (French for ‘deceive the eye’, a
technique that creates an optical illusion that
objects are in three dimensions) while he was on a
trip to Italy. He decided to incorporate some
elements of the style into the mural.
Ryan Adams was born and raised in Portland,
and his work can been seen throughout Portland,
in the form of commissioned murals, including a
50- foot by 10-foot mural inside Binga’s Stadium,
the front signage of Binga’s, the murals at Nosh
Kitchen Bar, the Novare Res outdoor deck, and a
large mural at Bruno’s Restaurant & Tavern on
Allen Avenue.
If you are looking for a good reason to visit Joe’
s Smoke Shop, or the Longfellow Square area in
general, now is your chance. It’s likely that the
mural will look even cooler when the drifting snow
starts to pile up underneath and creates a sort of
natural framing of the piece. Then again, it’ll look
great when the snow melts, too.
For more information about Ryan Adams’ visit www.
flicker.com/photos/radams207
Fore more information about Jeff Griecci’s work
visit http://vimeo.com/mintfilms
The Interview
Q: How did the mural project on Joe’
s Smoke Shop come about?
JG: “In the end of August 2010, a good friend
who works at Joe’s came to me and said that the
owners were complaining about having to repaint
the walls due to graffiti. Joe’s was interested in a
mural, so our friend Meghan who works at Joe’s
approached us and asked if we would be
interested in painting a mural. We met with the
owners and discussed what they were looking and
what they wanted. They originally had very
ambiguous ideas. They wanted city portraits of
their corner of Congress Street, where Joe’s was
originally located, and of the church that used to
be where the parking lot now is. The congregation
evaporated and it lost income and so they
eventually demolished the church there. Joe’s
used to be right next to the church, in a little
building that was there. What is now Joe’s Smoke
Shop was a shoe shining parlor back then. When
Joe’s Smoke Shop moved to the bigger building,
they moved the shoe shining business to the
back.”
MD: “Our grandfather (Joe) said ‘Do what you
gotta’ do.’ He’s 96 years old now.”
Q: How long did the entire process
take, from early idea stage, to
meeting stage, to the completion of
the wall?
JG: “When Ryan and I started the project, we
talked to the owners of Joe’s and their family and
their customers, and we learned quickly that
everyone had a huge story to tell about the history
of Portland and it was so fascinating! So, we spent
that first week just listening to the stories and
asking a lot of questions.”
“Around mid September 2010, I set up a meeting
with Ryan. We started talking to Joe’s and made
copies of the old photos of buildings they gave to
us. Then we sketched our ideas on to the copies
of the photos. Joe’s originally wanted the whole
exterior of their building painted with murals. They
wanted accurate old city scenes. The Trelawny
Building and the old church are both in the mural.
The owners also talked about doing portrait of the
original Joe, and a portrait of the car Joe owned,
and incorporating a shoeshine scene into it.”
“The funny thing about this project is that Joe’s is
owned by four brothers. Ryan and I got together
and figured things out and the plan got shifted to
doing one section at a time. The other brothers
were iffy about it, and there was some
disagreement among the brothers, so the plans
kept changing whoever we spoke to. But Ryan and
I sketched up what the wall would look like, they
gave the go ahead with a couple of minor
changes, and we got started. Because of the
weather, it took about three weeks to do, working
around our schedules. We painted the mural
portraits of the city first, from the historical photos
that the owners of Joe’s had supplied. We painted
both ends of the mural first, working inward.”
Q: Do you consider your piece to be
a mural? Street art? Graffiti? Other?
What are the distinctions and are
they important to you?
JG: “The piece is a mural; maybe it’s graffiti-
inspired, but not actually graffiti. I’d call it a mural.
Primarily, the purpose of the piece was to keep
graffiti off the walls. We figured that the likeliness
of graffiti being painted over the mural would be
greatly reduced if we incorporated some form of
graffiti inspired art into it. If it were just a city
scene, it would be respected differently. In that
community, it is a great disrespect to go over
people’s work. It still happens, but it’s something
you don’t do, and it’s not well respected. The
whole idea is if you having a graffiti problem, it is
important to incorporate some kind of graffiti-
inspired work into it. It needs to be there.”
Q: Can you talk about the reaction, if
any, to your piece that passers-by
had while you were working on it?
JG: “When we started the center piece (the graffiti-
influenced section) of the mural, I noticed a
marked change in the comments that people made
when they stopped to look. People started to say
things like, ‘I really like both ends of the building…’
then walk away. There were a couple times when I
asked them, ‘Why don’t you like the mural part in
the middle?’ The answer was usually ‘I don’t know
what it is.’ So I wonder do they not like it because
they don’t understand it?”
JG: “A lady stopped and asked if we were there
legally, while I was standing up on a milk crate,
with my respirator, gloves, music and paint can.
After I told her that we were there legally, she
walked inside and asked the owners of Joe’s. They
said, “Yes, we are paying him to do it! Others
joked if we had permission. I don’t think I would be
out here on a Sunday afternoon and if it wasn’t ok!
I was writing Joe’s Smoke shop on the side of the
building! When people see an aerosol can, it’s a
completing different thing. If I had been holding a
brush and bucket, I would have been ok. Maybe if
people can’t see your face, they don’t understand
and get nervous? Every time I shook a can,
people across the street would literally stop and
look over. But overall, passers by were stopping
all the time. The owners were coming out and
complimenting us all the time.”
MD: “When they were doing it, everyone was
talking about it. The people next door love it! It
really looks better than it did before. If you saw the
picture, it looks pretty much the same!”
Q: How did you paint the piece?
JG: “The entire piece was done using aerosol
paint, except for some of the background black
and white, which we rolled out with a bucket and a
roller.”
Q: Does it have a title?
JG: “Not yet.”
Q: Was this project fun to you to be
part of? What is the long-term plan
and does it require any maintenance?
JG: “I had a lot of fun dong it. The only drawback
was the weather. I wish we had been asked to do it
in June. You can only be out there so long until
the aerosol stops working. Right now, the plan is
to wait until the spring, when we plan to re-meet
with the owners to see if they want us to do more.
Painting the whole building is still a possibility.”
MD: “We have a picture of our grandfather Joe,
standing on newspapers in the store. We were
thinking of putting a portrait of him on the back
wall of the building. We are going around the back
of the building, and the only reason we stopped
was it got too cold. We will go around the back,
for sure, but have to wait until the spring.”
Q: How long do you anticipate it will
stay in place?
JG: “Overall, it has been received very well. We
have had a lot more positive feedback than not.
As long as Joe’s likes it, it will stay there for a long
time. I bet it will last a long time without being
touched by taggers. Ryan and I thought the mural
would be here for a while, we designed it with the
idea that it would last and we wanted it to look
right.”
Q: What are some of the issues or
things that the general public might
not know about the creation of art
like this that you want them to know
about?
JG: “I guess I’d want them to be open minded
about it and to really look at it and consider what
was there before, and what is there now, and keep
that in mind. Don’t go with your first 30-second
judgment. We spent a lot of time working on the
mural, out in the cold. There were days when I
worked on it from nine in the morning until the
streetlights came on. Although it might not be what
people understand and appreciate, we can’t
please everybody. It was designed for a purpose,
not only for aesthetics. It was designed to appeal
to a broad range; we were trying to appease a lot
a people.”
“One of the most interesting things to me was that
we painted the buildings first, and during that time,
the comments came from a ten year kid all the way
to a 75 year old woman. They were all good.
When we did the centerpieces, only a small
section of the people passing by changed their
comments, and they were our parent’s and
grandparent’s age. It seemed like a few people
thought wow, it still looks great, but the graffiti-
inspired part was shunned, almost. It seems like
the kids are open-minded to the whole aspect of
the piece. Why isn’t the older generation? And a
lot of the regulars feel ownership of Joe’s, and
when they saw something happening to their spot,
maybe they saw us as bringing new stuff into this
place they’ve grown up getting a soda pop in and
now there is this new kind of thing.”
“My parents and grandparents have seen it. They
love it. My parents don’t understand it, but maybe
because I am their son, they are open to it. When
my dad saw it and realized I was getting paid for it,
he was more open to it!”
RA: “It is hard to take the process of creating a
mural, that energy, and move it into a gallery. It’s
like seeing a tiger in the zoo. It’s cool, but a
different experience to see it in the wild. Murals
are part of the scenery, in the environment, it is
the most effective outdoors.”
Q: Does the commoditization of
street art/graffiti belong in this
conversation? How do you feel
about the attitude present in the
graffiti world suggesting that if
property owners/cities encourage
graffiti or preserve it, are they
neutering it somehow?
JG: “A lot of people think there is a purity to doing
this kind of art and not getting paid to do it. I did
the mural because I love painting and thought it
would reach a lot of people, not to make rent. If
you can do it and still stay true to it, than it’s a
good thing. You are going to get judged no matter
if you get paid to do art or not. You can do both if
you have a healthy balance.”
Q: Should the City of Portland and/or
businesses do more to encourage
this type of work?
JG: “It’s always good to see more murals around
town. I really appreciate architecture in this town
so I think that a lot of the beautiful old buildings
don’t need anything more added to them. But if it’s
a big concrete wall, why not put some color on it?
Any place that utilizes the talent that’s in this town
is good. In the case of the oil tankers in South
Portland, why on earth would they commission
artist from across the globe? Maybe they want to
get big names from out of state, but why they
wouldn’t commission any of the talented local
people to do the painting, I’ll never understand.”
MD: “I would encourage other businesses to do
this.”
RA: “It’s great that some places are allowing us to
do this kind of thing. Maine artworks can focus on
Maine landscapes, and art made only for tourists.
To see businesses in Maine doing this does more
for the art and culture in Portland. It’s great for the
city, and it’s something new to add to the Maine
arts.”
Q: Who are some of your influences
and artists, thinkers, writers that you
admire?
JG: “My influences for the mural for the buildings
we painted come partially from when I was in Italy
in the Fall and early Winter of 2009, and a lot of
the buildings I saw there had been painted with
faux bricks and I used those techniques when we
were painting the mural. The middle part was
influenced by graffiti in Boston and Portland the
early 90’s and 2000’s.”
Q: What did you learn while working
on this project?
JG: “I learned tons of history about Joe’s that I didn’
t know. I didn’t realize how rich the history of that
place is. Although there is an eclectic crew in that
neighborhood, they still have regulars and people
who care about their places and spots. They care
about it as much as people in the West End or
East End care about their neighborhoods.”
Q: How was it to collaborate with
somebody on such a large piece?
JG: “Ryan is really knowledgeable, flexible, and
nice. This was the first time I worked with him on
that scale and size. We were literally working hand-
over-hand doing sections of the mural. And there
were other parts where we worked on separate
buildings at a time. We definitely got closer. When
we got halfway through the project, I left for the
night, and thought about how well we were getting
along. I lucked out! It was nice it worked out that
way. I look forward to going back with Ryan in the
spring to see what the next step is or doing this
kind of work with him in the future.”
RA: “I have collaborated with people before and it
was a lot of fun working with Jeff.”
Q: Is there anything else you’d like
to mention or add?
JG: “It was humbling and nice to know that there
are so many people in the area that are excited
and appreciate that we do this kind of work.”
