Regina landlord tackling unwanted graffiti with Regina Free Wall project for graffiti artists
Mark Lien hopes to get more landlords on board
The back alley on the corner of McDonald Street and Sixth Avenue in Regina is usually a hotspot for taggers writing their names and symbols. To stop that trend, it's now filled with bags of dozens of spray paint cans, acrylic paint and brushes.
Kiel Smith, better known through his artist name Raef-Mgs, has been working for days on a large mythological piece showing Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
Smith has been doing professional art in Regina since 2011 and may be best known for his pieces on Albert Street and Seventh Avenue, at the Centennial Market and at the Tipsi Samurai. Now he's the first to do a large mural for the Regina Free Wall project.
"It's good for the city, rather than just blank walls all the time," Smith said.
Mark Lien started the Regina Free Wall project. The landlord couldn't stop unwanted graffiti on his large buildings in the Eastview Neighbourhood. In Regina, it's illegal to own property with graffiti on it. Lien said he was painting over graffiti tags almost daily.
He wanted to help the problem, while at the same time promoting local artists and beautifying the city.
"I've always been a fan of murals and public art," Lien said. "It's a lot of work to do a mural like this, and it's not inexpensive, so part of this too is me trying to figure out a way that I could make this more accessible to the artists and more accessible to the building owners."
There are a few rules for the free walls: no hate speech, no racism, no gang affiliations, they must be child appropriate and artwork trumps tags. Any artist can work on the wall to showcase their skills and learn new ones.
"Different artists have already done pieces on the wall and I've been very happy with all of it. You know, some of it has been fairly a fairly quick tag, but some of it's been quite, quite nice with a lot of thought and effort that went into it," Lien said.
Lien is now using social media to create a public meeting point for building owners and artists to connect. He said he wants to see more landlords sign on to create free walls to combat unwanted graffiti — walls with open permission for artists to do pieces on.
"I'm hoping that having access to spaces like this will encourage younger artists to do something more productive with their time than tagging and running," he said.
Smith said he was one of those young kids running around and tagging buildings and trains at one point, but it's about taking that and growing as an artist. Smith said for him, having this space would have been huge.
"It allows kids to come here and work on stuff. Young artists, new artists, old artists can be creative and kind of be collaborative with building owners," Smith said.
Smith said it also elevates the profile of artists like him and could lead to more work in the future. Beyond that, Smith said there's also a mentorship aspect, where kids and teenagers can learn from experienced artists like himself and build relationships to carry into their careers.
