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| Photo by me, April 2014. |
Summerhill for the past several decades has been a neighborhood dominated by sports stadiums. First came Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1965 then Turner Field in 1996 and now Georgia State University is the big land owner and potential developer to come here. The 1996 Summer Olympics were held here and the Olympic torch cauldron still stands on Capitol Avenue but mostly what a large part of Summerhill is at first glance is a sea of asphalt parking lots. Sitting in the shadows of a vibrant Downtown Atlanta there isn't much in the way color.
What was once a vital commercial center on Georgia Avenue has mostly been torn down so that baseball fans could park their cars. What remains are a few buildings occupied by a liquor store and a dry cleaner and nothing else. Though fireworks would reguarly light up the sky over Turner Field there was very little in the way of bright and hopeful color on the ground.
Until in 2013, Living Walls came to the neighborhood and brought in artists to paint murals on some of the drab buildings. Summerhill and the area on Georgia Avenue was filled with color.
One of those murals was created by artist Trek Matthews of Chicago. Matthews is a visual artist that works in a variety of mediums. He has also painted other murals in Atlanta for Living Walls and has had shows at the High Museum and as far away as Russia.
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| Photo by me, April 2014. |
So what to make of this mural? I don't know the artist's vision or intent here so I can only make my own interpretation of this abstract mural. To me it looks like a bird, maybe a crane of some sort, moving from right to left. It is a colorful bird no doubt as it struts across the light blue backdrop. If it is a bird that would be sort of fitting since the symbol for the city of Atlanta is the phoenix rising from the ashes. But I could be totally wrong in my interpretation.
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