Artist readies to let fly on mural

Koi to grace side of Bennett’s Military building in LR

Artist Matt McLeod is creating an image of swimming koi similar to this one that he mocked up to show stakeholders. McLeod’s mural will be created on a blank wall at Sixth and Main streets in Little Rock.
Artist Matt McLeod is creating an image of swimming koi similar to this one that he mocked up to show stakeholders. McLeod’s mural will be created on a blank wall at Sixth and Main streets in Little Rock.

A mural of giant, vibrantly colored koi fish by Little Rock artist Matt McLeod will go on a blank, white wall at Sixth and Main streets, across from where McLeod will soon open his own gallery. The 3,700-square-foot surface should be prepared sometime in March and the mural completed by mid-May.

"Everybody says, 'Why koi?'" said McLeod, who entered the art world through the back door of graphics design for ad agencies. He said he has used the fish a lot in his artwork and that people are fascinated by them, so it makes sense to use them in a large-scale setting.

"It's a sort of juxtaposition of fish in water in this concrete cityscape," McLeod said. "It's just such a contrast that it becomes interesting."

The final rendering likely will include a half-dozen fish much larger than the automobiles that will be parked in the lot in front of it.

Also, the Urban Garden Montessori School has a small open-sided shack and some raised garden beds in the parking lot in front of where the mural will go.

"I think it's going to create this feeling of 'Wow, this is a really creative place; this is a creative corridor,'" he said.

The bright colors have become McLeod's signature. Many of the works created during his 11-year professional career portray the realism of representational form against abstract color. He likes the "push-pull" of the two and finds it intriguing.

McLeod admits that he's not making a lot of money to do the mural, but he's honored to have been chosen to do it. Besides, he'll be able to point out the windows of his Sixth Street gallery and show off his work to potential clients.

Talk of the project started last spring when Sheree Meyer, proprietor of Bennett's Military Supplies, mentioned to McLeod that she would like to see a mural on the side of the building at 608 Main St. The 5,000-square-foot building is owned by Robert Oliver, who also owns RAO Video across Main Street.

McLeod first proposed a long, thin strip of the American flag in keeping with Meyer's wishes and connection to the business of selling military gear.

Oliver's son, Victor, liked the original rendering, though he gave his approval for the new mural and sees it as a positive.

"It's colorful. It's nice. It should draw a lot of attention," Victor Oliver said. "I thought it was pretty neat-looking."

Creation of the mural is funded by a private foundation, the Educational Foundation of America in New York. Little Rock connected McLeod with the foundation and reviewed and co-approved the creative work on the project. It was all a matter of being at the right place at the right time, McLeod said.

He's waiting for warmer weather so he can begin. Paint will not set up when the temperature is below 35 degrees. Once the surface is prepared and primed, he'll use a combination of exterior latex in layers and then acrylic paint. It'll be topped off with an ultraviolet-light-resistant coating to protect it from fading. However, the mural will face north and won't have full sun exposure.

David Robinson, managing director of Reed Realty Advisors LLC -- which owns the building across Sixth Street and will be McLeod's landlord -- said he expects the mural to deter crime and graffiti in the area. There's also potential to raise property values, he said. The concept was predominantly tested and met with some success in Detroit.

Robinson said graffiti is a constant threat to his downtown properties.

"As soon as I paint a wall, there's someone who comes and spray-paints behind me," he said.

"If you act like there's life again in an area, it'll reap benefits," he added.

McLeod said there are numerous opportunities for murals on other buildings in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock. However, he said he hasn't seen a blank space as large as the side of Bennett's.

The new mural planned for Sixth and Main isn't the first to decorate downtown Little Rock.

In 1980, muralist Debra Lynn Moseley painted a huge hibiscus on the side of the old Blass Dry Goods building on Main Street between Third and Fourth streets.

Moseley was paid with funds from a now-ended program that provided federal grants for outdoor mural projects. The design was large and bold enough to be seen by people looking south from the River Market District toward downtown.

However, the mural was painted over in 2012 when Robinson and partner Scott Reed readied the structure for apartments. The Blass building now is the home of K Lofts apartments.

Business on 01/07/2015

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