The cash-award winning mural went to “Bull” by Nico Cathcart. (Photo by Nikki Park.)
By Betsy DiJulio
“Portsmouth is dope.” You don’t hear that often, laughed Nikki Park, one of the 4-member subcommittee of Support Portsmouth Public Art (SPPA) who recently mounted the inaugural Wall Street Mural Fest. But, indeed, that was one participant’s response to the celebratory event. With some 1600-1800 people in attendance on May 11, someone else quipped that they hadn’t seen that many cars in Portsmouth since the 1980s.
Park, a freelance graphic designer, and John Joyce, a retired medical doctor, recently took their time to share a few thoughts on this SPPA event they spearheaded along with Matt Diggs and Linda Jaglowski. Formed by volunteers in 2010, SPPA is a non-profit organization whose mission centers around purchasing and installing public art in Portsmouth, educating citizens about it, and providing related outreach to neighborhoods.
While the organization has overseen a number of projects in Portsmouth, including some 100 murals, Wall Street is their first mural festival. But based on overwhelmingly positive feedback, it won’t be their last. The subcommittee began organizing last November but only started planning in earnest in January, pulling the project together quickly.
Originally conceived as a biennial event, response on social media suggests there is an appetite for a yearly happening. From his perspective, Joyce, a founding member of SPPA, feels the festival was charmed. “It was one of the best times I’ve ever had in Portsmouth…everything went right.” He observed that, among other things, “the artists got along so well,” with some two-thirds known to each other, including those who had worked together previously.
This year’s mural festival was an outgrowth of a 2023 SPPA project, Painting Vintage Row, in which volunteers painted a series of faux storefronts in the 900 block of High Street. One participant threw down the gauntlet when they bantered, “Now you’ve painted the front of the buildings; when are you going to paint the backs?” In 2024, as it turns out.
The Wall Street committee juried ten experienced mural artists into the project from a pool that snowballed to some 50—they expected only 16 to 18 entries—all with Portsmouth or Virginia connections (see Sidebar). According to Park, two are from Portsmouth, seven are originally from Virginia, and one is from Toronto but now makes her home in Richmond. Their design brief was to conceive of a mural to be painted on a building lining the alley-like Wall Street, a private road, or the adjacent 400 block of Hatton Street located in the Innovation District.
Rather than the initial painting window of only the festival weekend, the organizers expanded that timeframe to two to three weeks to accommodate weather and other unexpected delays. But they asked the artists to complete their murals on May 11, the day of the festival, so the public could engage with them and watch them in action between noon and 7 p.m.
Some artists projected, some used the “Doodle Method” (an interaction of doodles with a superimposed design) some gridded, and some just started spray painting. The result was a wide range of subjects and styles from non-objective to representational. The only prescribed imagery was a bull and a bear, nods to “the” Wall Street in NYC. Nico Cathcart’s bull won the Juror’s Award—jurors were Patrick Bullock, Gayle Paul, Charlie Rasputin—with Nai Turner winning the People’s Choice Award.
In addition to the culmination of the painted murals, the festival, whose entrance was at the corner of Hatton Street and High Street, featured bands and a DJ, breakdancing and skateboarding competitions, food trucks, other vendors, games, and arts and crafts. “This is such a vibe,” enthused one festival-goer. Though the last beats of music faded away at 7 p.m. on May 11, the murals will be available for public viewing for a good long time.
More on Wall Street Mural Fest and Support Portsmouth Public Art at www.SPPAVA.org
Featured Mural Artists
Ellen Bible
Berk Biggs III
Prentice Carroll
Nico Cathcart
Marlon Diggs
Christian Harrell
Dathan Kane
Austin Miles
Nai Turner
Dave Wray
