C2 Paint Adding Color to Communities

An Artful Approach

C2 Paint has always held a profound appreciation for artistry, one of the pillars of their brand, and the basis of their full spectrum color approach. By supporting local artists, they are helping to beautify several communities throughout America.

In their hometown of Buffalo, NY, C2 has teamed up with the Albright Knox Museum to provide paint for their Public Art Initiative, an innovative partnership designed to enhance a shared sense of place and cultural identity in the urban and suburban landscapes of Western New York.

"Our brand was inspired by the beauty of nature and the arts. By supporting our local artists, we can encourage creativity and add color to create vibrant communities" - Tom Hill, C2 Paint 

The Albright Knox Public Art Initiative presents artists from around the region, nation, and world working in varied forms of media, from traditional to forward-thinking interactions, sculpture to performance, and the permanent to the ephemeral.

The goal of the Initiative is to create spaces of dialogue where diverse communities have the ability to produce great public art that is capable of empowering individuals, creating stronger neighborhoods, and establishing Western New York as a critical cultural center.    – Aaron Ott, Albright Knox Museum 

The Buffalo Murals

Metamorphisis #5
Artist: Tavar Zawaki
Location: 1665 Main Street, Buffalo NY

At the time of its completion, Metamorphosis #5 was the largest mural of Tavar Zawacki’s career and in the whole of Western New York. The vibrant pattern of vividly colored overlapping and interweaving forms—visible for blocks on this stretch of Main Street—is based on Zawacki’s signature artistic motif: the upward arrow.

At the age of 19, Zawacki—who had been casually interested in graffiti since his early teen years—bought a one-way plane ticket to Paris, driven to “rise above” his fears and dedicate himself completely to becoming a street artist. While he initially channeled this spirit into the tag ABOVE, Zawacki soon gravitated toward the upward arrow as a more universal expression, as he as explained, “of the powerful mentality to rise above fears, challenges, and anything holding you back from your goals. . . . everything is possible!” In the context of 1665 Main Street, this imagery and the idea of metamorphosis, or dynamic transformation, resonates with the resurgence of the greater Buffalo region and ongoing positive economic and cultural developments in the East Side neighborhoods nearby. 

1800s Bikes in Vines
Artist: Nicole Cherry
Location: 1330 Niagra Street, Buffalo NY

In her mural for 1330 Niagara Street, Buffalo-based artist Nicole Cherry combines her signature eye for color and pattern with imagery inspired by the building’s future occupant: a bicycle shop. Cherry, a citizen of the Cayuga nation, began painting murals inside family and friends’ homes when she was still in high school. Since graduating from Buffalo State College, Cherry has expanded her practice to create indoor and outdoor installations for numerous local institutions, including Undergrounds Coffee House and Roastery in Buffalo’s Historic Old First Ward neighborhood, and Elmwood Pet Supplies on Elmwood Avenue.

Wildflowers for Buffalo, 2018
Artist: Louise Jones
Location: 465 Washington Street, Buffalo NY

The floral motifs artist Louise Jones incorporated into Wildflowers for Buffalo were inspired by the local landscape. Based on conversations with horticulturists and on her own research, Jones identified a number of plants native to the region as the basis for this mural; these include (from top left to bottom): red clover, coneflower (echinacea), burdock, chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, thistle, lamb’s quarters, swamp rose, and yarrow. The artist was drawn to these species not only for their connection to the Buffalo region but also for their role in herbal medicine traditions as aides for bringing about well-being. Later, she supplemented this selection of flora with what she called “special cultivated guests”: strawflowers and pussy willows that she encountered thriving on a farm in Eden. At 80 feet tall by 160 feet wide, Wildflowers for Buffalo is the largest mural of Jones’s career and the largest AK Public Art Initiative mural to date.

 Watch the Video: https://youtu.be/N7MvLGPzEVY

 

Our Colors Make Us Beautiful 
Artist: Muhammad Zaman
Location: 1131 Broadway, Buffalo NY

Buried in the layers of calligraphic forms at the center of this mural is its poetic title: Our Colors Make Us Beautiful. Artist Muhammad Zaman’s wide-ranging projects—from works on paper and paintings to this mural, his largest work to date—are all grounded in language. His compositions come together through an organic accumulation of thought fragments in the three languages that inform his identity: English, the language of his adopted home; Bengali, the language of his homeland; and Arabic, the language of his religion. Here, these messages peek through abstract passages of interwoven paint. In Our Colors Make Us Beautiful, Zaman explores the possibilities of verbal and visual expression to bring about mutual understanding and empathy among people from diverse walks of life.

Watch the Video: https://youtu.be/xwQUGPlSnRM

Work and Play
Artist: Otecki (Wojciech Kołacz)
Location: 617 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo NY

Wrocław, Poland–based artist Otecki (Wojciech Kołacz) has created an installation, Work and Play, that significantly adds to the cultural landscape of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood, historically settled and established by many Polish families; today, Buffalo is home to the second-largest Polish population in the United States. The location is directly across the street from Torn Space Theater, which is housed in the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle.

Wojciech Kołacz, a.k.a. Otecki (Polish, born 1984), is an illustrator, printmaker, painter, and mural artist working in Wrocław, Poland. Otecki finds influence in Cubism, non-Western art, and Slavonic folklore and is fond of presenting dualistic worlds and characters; especially human-animal combinations that are “part majesty and part mystery,” as the artist puts it.

Watch the Video: https://youtu.be/__PliZJzjJk

weego
Artists: Chuck Tingley and Matt Grote
Location: 1503 Hertel Avenue, Buffalo NY

This mural celebrates nostalgia for cartoons, video games, and other imaginative preoccupations of youth. Its title, weego, comes from a pseudonym that the Buffalo-based artist Chuck Tingley and his painting partner, Cincinnati-based artist Matt Grote (a.k.a. OGRE), developed for their collaborative projects.

The imagery of this hot-air balloon fleet was inspired by the classic Nintendo, arcade, and puzzle-based board games of the artists’ childhoods. Tingley and Grote were particularly interested in how these play-based scenarios offered opportunities to escape to an alternate world, taking you away to a space that is more imaginative and immersive. As adults, they retrospectively realized the value of the childlike wonder spurred by these games and playing together. Their design is an attempt to reclaim humor, whimsy, and fun as having the same power to transform our everyday lives that great art does.

Watch the Video: https://youtu.be/eKgw3XxDfZE

Artist: Hillary Waters Fayle
Location: 244 Dewitt Street, Buffalo NY

Buffalo-born and Richmond-based artist Hillary Waters Fayle’s mural for 244 Dewitt Street celebrates both the 25th anniversary of Garden Walk Buffalo as well as the everyday connection between local residents and our natural surroundings. As part of Garden Walk Buffalo 2019, Fayle collaborated with community members to create cyanotypes—contact prints created using sun-sensitive paper—based on local plants. Copies of these images will serve as the inspiration for the artist’s Dewitt Street mural, which is currently taking shape.

I want to salvage and revive our individual and collective connection to the natural world. . . [using] found botanical and organic material . . . to symbolically bind nature and the human touch.  -- Hillary Fayle

The plants in a garden support one another,” she explains, “and they work together to create a unified community. We can use that metaphor to talk about our own communities and to celebrate the beauty in our diversity.”

To learn more about this incredible Buffalo NY art initiative click HERE.  

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