Troy mural project an extension of BLM artwork
Protests last summer sparked creative outlet to encourage expression
A year ago, the in-custody death of George Floyd sparked widespread Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Like with many forms of protests, they inspired a lot of art.
The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy decided to encourage this creative outlet and launched From Troy to Troy, a public art project conceptualized in response to the murals created last spring on the plywood used to board up storefronts; owners were afraid of damage during the demonstrations. Local artists were invited to submit mural concepts that helped foster a deeper connection with the shared experience.
According to Belinda Colón, curator at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, the art was meant to be uplifting, while extending the dialog the protests had forced people to have.
“We really wanted to continue to allow artists to create visually,” Colón said, “and with conversations through those visual texts or images, what they felt they needed to tell, what story they wanted to tell. We did ask that the conversations were positive and uplifting. But it doesn’t mean that a positive conversation can still have some kind of message within it.”
The Arts Center chose four artists for the grant, two of them, Eugene O’neill and Toast, are due to unveil their murals starting next month.
O’neill said he was inspired by his work with the YWCA on First Street in Troy, where he helps out by offering his design services to their marketing department.
“I thought it would be a wonderful idea to paint something on the back of the building that wasn’t just about painting on a building,” he said. “It was like, let’s make this a marketable piece that is alluring, that is empowering to the women that lived here, and attract people to be more curious as to what this building even is.”
O’neill was also working on other community mural projects and at first wasn’t sure how to work on this one as well.
“I had a lot of friends saying, you got to do one of these grants, and I was like, if I have time,” he said. “I’m working on another program, Amplified Voices with Jade Warrick, who’s also another artist in the community, so I was kind of focused on making sure everyone else could get their murals out. But people kept kind of putting it into my frame of mind.”
O’neill’s mural is an illustration of two hands coming together, which according to him is a reference to the creation of Adam. He wants to remove the patriarchal and misogynistic connotations and make it a reference to women’s hands rather than men’s hands. The mural is titled, “The Push of a Button,” referring to the button of love, symbolized by a heart also on the mural.
Toast Halasz, who goes by Toast, is one of the other artists — an IT professional turned 3D-printing artist. The pandemic made him pursue his hobby of 3D-printed art more and just as he decided to go professional as an artist, the Arts Center grant was announced.
Toast’s mural design is centered on the Troy brick (made famous by brick manufactures embossing the word “Troy” on each brick): “One of the symbols that I’ve always loved about this town is the Troy brick itself. Because it was made by Uncle Sam and what’s more Troy than Uncle Sam himself ?” Sam Wilson and his brother relocated to Troy after the Revolutionary War and opened their first business as brick manufacturers.
Toast created a large design which he then split up into 860 individual 3D-printed tiles that will be painted different colors. They will then come together into the shape of a Troy brick.
As he went about researching and designing his mural, Toast couldn’t find another example of 3D-printed mural in the world. He then applied for a Guinness World Record and is currently waiting to hear back.
Toast said he is giving people the option to buy a tile of the mural and have their names 3D printed on it.
“Similar to the way city infrastructure does this sort of thing, when they build a bridge, you can purchase a tile with your name on it,” he said. “And then I can set that into the mural and then ship a copy of the same tile to the person that purchased it. So, each individual tile will have a different person’s name on it, or just say, ‘Troy.’” Residents can purchase tiles on his website, wartoaster.com.
The mural will go on a series of backing plates of aluminum, fixed down with epoxy. Onto this, the individual panels will be installed one at a time by Toast with the help of his wife and a friend. He plans to invest the rest of the money from the tile drive into more robust aluminum plates on the back in order to preserve the historic brick. His mural will be located on the back wall of 32 First St. in Troy.
Specific dates for each unveiling will be announced at the completion of each project and can be found on https:// www.artscenteronline.org/ publicart/from-troy-to-troy/