Art For Everybody

Murals of Minneapolis

Growing up in the beautiful, culturally rich city of Minneapolis, I saw many gorgeous murals every day. Murals that held powerful messages. Murals that honored the dead or the living. Murals that simply wanted to recognize the creativity and inner beauty that the city of Minneapolis has, but also that we ourselves have. I hope you like and appreciate them as much as I do. 

    The mural you see below is probably one of the most famous of all Minneapolis' murals, the Prince Mural. It was created by Hiero Veiga in 2022 to honor the musician. Well-known Minnesota-based companies, such as Target, Best Buy, the Minnesota Twins, and U.S. Bank, contributed the needed funds to bring this mural to life. If you didn't know, Prince grew up in Minneapolis. So when he passed away in 2016, the city of Minneapolis deeply grieved his loss. He is a beloved and influential icon who represents the talent and passion that reside within the residents of Minneapolis. This mural retains that message and inspires the city to go after its dreams.

    Prince had a major impact on a lot of people through his music. Although I personally wasn't super into his music, I praised him for the way that he presented himself. Prince was greatly flamboyant and influenced others to express themselves in more authentic ways, going against the norm. 

    I personally love that Prince represented a heterosexual man who could lean into his femininity while still being seen as a strong and powerful man. People of the past mostly seemed to believe that you can't be both, but icons such as Prince opened their eyes to new ideas and helped get us to the more accepting reality we live in today. The world can always use more men and women who bend gender roles such as Prince did. His famous symbol even represents the idea of blending genders, "The symbol, originally a combination of the common gender symbols for male and female, previously had appeared in slightly different form in the artwork of several Prince albums"(Aswad, 2023 Variety).

     I see this mural to be for everybody because I believe Prince carried the message to unapologetically be yourself and to not let anyone control you. When more people lean into that message, the world becomes a stronger, more diverse, and accepting place.

    The Prince Mural is so eye-catching due to its gorgeous use of color, and, obviously, its larger-than-life scale. This mural is huge, as it's painted on a 7-story parking ramp and measures about 100 feet tall, reflecting the enormity that was Prince. When you pass by the mural, you practically can't miss it due to its large scale, especially at night, when I believe it really comes alive. 

    The color palette used to paint this mural seems to be very intentional. Of course, there's purple, Prince's trademark color, but we also see pops of gold and pink. The gold could represent his powerful image and Royal name, while the pink may represent the flamboyant side to him that truly made Prince the stand-out performer that he was. On the bottom right corner, we can also see a pop of blue around an image of Prince from his early years, paying homage to his past. 

    Within this mural, we can actually see a simplified version that is the Evolution of Prince. On the bottom, we see Prince as he was when he started out in the music industry. Then, in the middle, Prince is depicted at arguably the height of his career. And lastly, the biggest image of Prince on this mural shows who Prince had become by the end of his career, a powerful, determined, and monumental public figure.

    Another monumental mural in Minneapolis is the George Floyd Mural, created in 2020 by three artists: Xena Goldman, Greta McLain, and Cadex Herrera. The mural was painted on the wall of the Cup Foods in Minneapolis, where his tragic death occurred. This mural inspired numerous other murals honoring George Floyd to start popping up across not only Minnesota, but also states such as Colorado, Texas, and New York, as well as countries such as Germany, Spain, and England.

    George Floyd was a citizen of Minneapolis who died at the hands of law enforcement in May of 2020. Because I want to focus this blog more on the artwork that honors him, I will not be diving into the whole story of the horrific event. However, I would encourage you to click the link at the bottom of this blog post if you are unfamiliar with his story.

   The Death of George Floyd was a huge breaking point for not only Minnesotans but for people worldwide. The event "sparked days of unrest in Minneapolis and St. Paul and mass protests across the globe over the treatment of Black people by police. Since then, lawmakers both nationally and locally have debated police reform and whether law enforcement officers must change how they do their jobs. In schools, educators and students have tackled discussions on race and equity, sometimes with controversy"(MPR News).

    My personal reaction to this mural is heaviness. The art carries so much weight. Yes, it is honoring George Floyd, but it also honors all the black men who have been wrongfully killed by law enforcement. For a period of time, events like the death of George Floyd were occurring one after the other, but Floyd's death happened to be caught on film. So anyone who had access to the internet could now see firsthand the experience that so many black males and females have endured. People who haven't felt sympathy before were now awake to these issues of injustice. They wanted to stand up for the individuals who have lost their lives, as well as individuals who feel they are at risk of losing their lives every day. But some individuals saw the footage and buckled down more, defending law enforcement and referring to Floyd as a drug addict as if that would've made the situation commendable. It was a time of passionate arguments that, in my opinion, needed to be had. When we're not having conversations regarding such dire issues, it's concerning and keeps our world stagnant when we're meant to change and evolve.

    The artists who worked on this mural did an amazing job of using contrast to emphasize George Floyd. You can see contrast within the work through the soft background paired with the bold and harsher lines within the image, and the name of George Floyd. The colors themselves also demonstrate great use of contrast. The yellow and blue really contrast well to make this mural pop and grab your attention, as I'm sure was the intention of the artists. 

    The main point of creating this mural was not only to honor the life of George Floyd and other black men and women, such as Terrence Crutcher, Michael Brown, and Breonna Taylor, but to emphasize these repeated occurrences of injustice regarding black citizens. We can see numerous names written in white that contrast against the black background, emphasizing just some names of the black men and women who have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement. Then we see that within the letters that spell out George Floyd, there's an uprising. I believe this represents how specifically the death of George Floyd caused a massive uprising across the globe. If anything positive could come from George Floyd's traumatic, wrongful death, I believe it to be people addressing the repeated injustice through massive protests, honorable murals, changes within law enforcement, and discussions in schools, as well as discussions amongst friends and family. Although none of these things directly solved the problem, they did help us as a whole to move towards better change and become more aware of how we can do better.

    The next work I chose is a mural that is actually untitled, but it's part of a Nationwide project called Endangered Species Mural Project. This monarch butterfly mural was created in 2015 by Roger Peet and Barry Newman on the side of "Toni's Market" in Minneapolis. The project is backed by the "Center for Biological Diversity", who work with artists, scientists, and others who help bring awareness to endangered species by painting murals all around the United States. "These murals are imagined as tools to help celebrate local endangered species within communities, and to encourage people to make connections between conservation and community strength"(Center for Biological Diversity).

    Endangered Species Murals have been created in 22 different states, for example, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, and Alaska. Multiple states even house a handful of murals from this project such as California and Oregon. Murals from this project have even been erected outside of the United States in Canada and in Mexico. 

    Focusing on this bright and gorgeous mural in Minneapolis, monarch butterflies "are plummeting toward extinction due to landscape-scale threats from pesticides, development and climate change"(Center for Biological Diversity). Over the course of the last three decades, the monarch butterfly's population has declined by 90 percent. We should not only care about their decline in population because they're beautiful and bring positive energy to most who see them, but also butterflies, along with bumble bees(who are also facing extinction), are pollinators. Although monarchs may not be the most crucial pollinators, "monarchs are like the proverbial 'canary in the coal mine' for pollinators. The declining monarch population parallels other declining pollinator populations, which in turn impacts human food systems"(Monarch Importance).

    This monarch mural shows a playful use of movement that makes the mural fun and enticing to look at. The artists used placement and direction to create the illusion of movement within the mural. Even the somewhat blurred background, as it holds so much less detail than the monarchs themselves, creates this perspective of movement. 

    These artists also use space to depict the illusion of depth within the artwork. One of the ways the artists achieve this illusion is by the use of overlapping elements, such as the monarchs and the plants. The levels of detail, as well as the size of the monarchs, also play a role in the effect of depth by using space. The monarchs in the foreground possess more details and are much larger than the two monarchs painted in the background.

      I see this mural as representing an important issue that often gets overlooked. We hear about endangered species so much that we almost become immune to the problem. So I think these murals are a great way to capture people's attention and bring awareness towards endangered species. I especially love how these murals depict an endangered species that's well-known to the area where the murals reside. The monarch butterfly, for example, is Minnesota's state insect, and most of us have fond memories of seeing them in the summer, not only as children but also as adults. So choosing certain species to depict in certain areas makes the artwork and message so much more impactful to the individuals who see it.

Link to Read About George Floyd

Monarch Importance. Monarch Joint Venture. (n.d.). https://monarchjointventure.org/faq/monarch-importance 

Monarch butterfly. Center For Biological Diversity. (n.d.-a). https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/invertebrates/monarch_butterfly/index.html 

The murder of George Floyd. MPR News. (n.d.). https://www.mprnews.org/crime-law-and-justice/killing-of-george-floyd 

Neeson, J. (2022, December 9). 26 powerful George Floyd murals seen around the world. Reader’s Digest. https://www.rd.com/list/george-floyd-murals/ 

Berry, D. (2020, May 29). Artists paint a George Floyd mural at Cup Foods. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/artists-paint-george-floyd-mural-at-cup-foods/

Colbert, C. (2018, October 29). Your guide to the best murals in Minneapolis. Carrie Colbert. https://carriecolbert.com/minneapolis-mural-guide/

Bream, J. (2022, June 3). Dig if you will this Prince mural as downtown Minneapolis goes purple. Star Tribune. https://www.startribune.com/dig-this-prince-mural-as-downtown-minneapolis-goes-purple-hiero-veiga-tyka-nelson-bob-dylan/600178774

Diamond Peter Diamond is the Digital Editor of Mpls.. St.Paul Magazine. Read more by Peter Diamond, P. (2022, June 2). The new Prince mural is complete in downtown Minneapolis. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/new-prince-mural-complete-downtown-minneapolis/

Aswad, J. (2023, June 7). Why prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol 30 years ago, and what happened next. Variety. https://variety.com/2023/music/news/prince-symbol-why-he-changed-his-name-1235635422/