{"id":30285,"date":"2015-10-24T08:42:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T14:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=30285"},"modified":"2018-09-25T16:31:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T22:31:33","slug":"30285","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/30285\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall of Hope: Murals Adorn Wall that Protects Children at The Road Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s decidedly not The Donald\u2019s wall. This one was installed by 100 volunteers and painted by, among others, paid graffiti artists and Salt Lake Tribune editorial cartoonist Pat Bagley. It\u2019s quite a project, quite a story, and more is to come.<\/p>\n

Surrounding a newly improved children\u2019s playground at The Road Home on 500 West and 200 South, one inspirational piece of the wall, running down the block, reads: HOPE FOR THE FUTURE GIVES US STRENGTH FOR TODAY.<\/p>\n

Another section, painted by Bagley, offers a \u201cSalt Lake City Resource Map.\u201d Held up by a pair of delightfully personable seagulls, it depicts such helpful buildings for people in need as the 4th<\/sup> Street Clinic, the Rescue Mission, St. Vincent de Paul\u2019s, and a detox center. All of these resources are located around the Rio Grande depot and a useful \u201cYou Are Here\u201d logo is provided. \u201c[It] is an impression of Salt Lake as viewed from the homeless shelter,\u201d Bagley says. \u201cA little like that New Yorker <\/em>cover showing the world according to someone in lower Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

A partnership between Salt Lake City and The Road Home (with the city funding the majority of the project), the wall was proposed by Ashley Hoopes, who volunteers at The Road Home and started a preschool for the children living there. Hoopes noticed that when she took her charges outside to the playground, none of the shelter families was using the area. \u201cThe chain link fence allowed their kids to witness drug deals and crime. It made it easy for dealers to sneak drugs in. I used to have to walk the area before class each morning, to pick up used drug paraphernalia that had been tossed through the fence,\u201d Hoopes says.<\/p>\n

Ellis Dean Hovey, a homeless man she had gotten to know over the years, said that a solid wall ought to be built to protect the children. Her good friend, Salt Lake City artist Chris Peterson, director of the Sorensen Unity Center (he did the train on the wall), thought parents and children at The Road Home should create a mural, along with local artists, to cover the blank cement, and the pair proposed the project to the mayor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Buehler, the city\u2019s homeless services coordinator, says Public Services gave the materials and made improvements to the playground and \u201cwe hired graffiti artists to do the artwork.\u201d There is another sign in process around the corner with a floral motif. \u201cEach flower will be done by a member of the community at some point in the near future,\u201d says Buehler, probably in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

Armed with a grant from Art Access, Hoopes and Peterson held Sunday art classes to help parents, teens and children express themselves through paint on the mural. They want to paint the inside as part of an art therapy wall, says Peterson.<\/p>\n