More wheelchair mural art
Flickr photo by mike fischer of a fantastically beautiful mural in San Franscisco. (I think Brown- femipower had this image in an entry about a year ago.) Two Latino women clasp hands above their heads and dance. A young woman with flowing dark hair sits in a manual wheelchair grinning at her able-bodied dance partner, an older woman with her hair in a bun. The older woman wears a sunny yellow top and blue print skirt. The younger woman wears turquoise pants and a lavender sleeveless top with the words "Earn Your Attitude, ACT UP" on it. The front wheels of her chair are not touched the ground, which is a field of grass and flowers.
Flickr photo by dabdiputs of a mural in the cafeteria of the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Against an abstract multi-colored squiggle background the giant blue figure of the international wheelchair access symbol dude sits with a big grin and some sort of green helmet. I think the helmet is for Extreme Moshing, because he is surrounded by the multi-colored words "Rock 'n Roll Wheelchair."
Flickr photo by nicholsphotos of the Working Classroom Mural at about 3rd and Gold Streets in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's part of the Albuquerque Murals Project. Detail of a larger image, apparently, this part is of a classroom of young students. A black woman in a bright turquoise dress stands before them holding up a copy of the Free Press newspaper while students of various races and ethnicities sit before her. The student on the far left, hand raised in the air, sits in a manual wheelchair.
A huge, very realistic image of a Latino or black man sitting in a power wheelchair. The dude is about ten stories tall and looks so real. Could an actual photograph be transferred onto a space that big? He's in a modern black power chair and wears a gray hooded sweatshirt under a khaki jacket. Baggy blue jeans and white sneakers. Flickr photo taken in Philly by robotkasten.
On a large wall with big white tiles of smooth brickwork, black silhouetted figures in profile travel toward each other. Coming from the left, a woman with her hair in a ponytail pushing a child in a stroller. Approaching from the left, an elderly man pushing a person in a manual wheelchair, with the leg rests of the chair sticking out in front. Flickr photo by LarimdaME. If the photo tags can be trusted, this mural can be found in the subway station at Prince Street, uptown in New York City.
Flickr photo by gregkendallball of a mural in an Edgefield hotel in Oregon. Three bald people in white sleeveless gowns sit in manual wheelchairs. They have small wings attached to their backs, so perhaps they're supposed to be angels? (I don't like that part.) On a cream colored wall with a bold blue river of water the people seem to be following. Yellow stars follow their path.
Liz Henry who blogs at Badgermama captions this Flickr photo from a Portland hotel: "i hate this hotel with its no elevators to the third floor and its 1-story high ramp in the back and how there are no lifts anywhere. and how smug everyone is. and how there is no bathroom in my room and no bathtub anywhere. But I especially hate its endless giant murals of smiling people in wheelchairs. What the fuck?" This mural of smiling people in wheelchairs is located in a stairwell, as you can see from the photo taken half a flight up, the closest someone portrayed in the mural might ever be able to get to the art. Ironic, no? I can't see the mural clearly enough to describe much detail, but there's a pool table and at least two people in wheelchairs, with a woman lounging sexily in the lap of one of the wheelchair users.



4 comments:
Oh, how wonderful that first one is! Absolutely spectacular!
As for the fourth one down, I'm thinking you can make a photo that big, kind of the way they do it in billboard advertising. I don't know how it's done, though.
As for the silhouette one, I think it's very cool that the person pushing the wheelchair appears to be older than the person in the wheelchair. It could so easily have been an "ages of mankind" cliché, but it isn't.
I'm not sure I see the "angels" as angels. They look more like mischievous spirits to me. Elderly mischievous spirits. Can't know without asking the artist, of course, but I prefer to think of them my way. ;)
And as for the stairwell paintings -- WTF?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: You have great taste in art. It's very cool to see such an interesting range of images, too. Thank you!
Sara: I agree about the silhouette one.
I like your interpretation of the "angels" as mischievous spirits, though I read the blue river behind them as the River Styx or passing over or something like that. It's pretty, but weird.
Oh god, that "Act Up" website did my head in. They do loads of good stuff - radically attacking racism and homophobia, medical marijuana, championing rights of HIV-positive people, etc - but then it's all based on a TOTALLY FALSE premise - the same crap believed by people like Thabo Mbeki that "HIV doesn't cause AIDS"...
If you want a "conspiracy theory", how about the one that's actually supported by both scientific and historical evidence - that HIV IS a retrovirus, it IS contagious and it DOES cause AIDS, but it was deliberately disseminated in Africa as an act of attempted genocide by the apartheid-era SA regime, assisted by the CIA (and quite possibly spread in queer communities of colour in the US for the same reasons)...
Great artwork, bringing hope and awareness to the community of people, like us, who cannot readily walk about. The colors are well placed*
H Rios
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