Want to express yourself through art? Oak Park puts up a spray paint wall for all

It’s the perfect place for you to express yourself and write on the walls. Legally that is.

Global Shapers Sacramento, DBA Arts, the Sol Collective, Balanced Body and Leave Your Mark Sac teamed up to host a launch party for a public spray paint wall in the Oak Park Art Garden on Sunday afternoon.

People were encouraged to drop by to “create and have fun” using the provided spray paints on the blank canvas and surrounding fences on the lot.

Randy Stannard is the Neighborhood Development Project Manager for Alchemist CDC, the lead organization behind the development and creation of the Oak Park Art Garden.

The garden sits on lot which is a third of an acre at the intersection of 14th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just off Highway 99. The project started as a way to give the people around Oak Park an opportunity to express themselves through art – and in a way that won’t violate the law. It’s also home to a fruit tree and garden area which has received support from Green Acres and the Sacramento Kings Foundation.

But Stannard says that if the community desires a bigger space, one possibly in a different location, the organization would have to consider that.

“We follow neighborhood and community energy,” Stannard said. “So if there is energy or the need for a bigger or different space in a different location, then our goal is wanting to support what people see as a need.”

Paul Endelman is a curator with Global Shapers Sacramento and believes it’s important for people to be able to express themselves artistically.

“There’s not that many spaces in a place like Oak Park. A lot of this stuff kind of gets focused on Midtown,” Endelman said. “So it’s nice that we can do one out here in a space that’s very public and people feel comfortable coming out and expressing themselves.”

Endelman estimated that around 150 to 200 people cycled through the garden Sunday, going through about 45 cans of paint. Around $600 was spent on the canvas while another couple of hundred dollars went toward paint supplies and snacks.

“It’s just cool for the art garden,” Endelman said. “There are a lot of people that didn’t realize this asset existed for the community. Also, we’ve been able to talk to people about other aspects of the street art community in Sacramento.”

The idea is for people to be able to come onto the lot at any time and express themselves. Stannard says there are no locks or gates, as the lot is for the community.

But as more people come, existing art on the wall will have to be painted over, something that Endelman said is common with spaces like this in bigger art cities.

“The artists that are doing wide open walls and murals, that level of artists in a more established street art city like London would have something get painted over in a week,” he said. “It pretty naturally gets covered up over time, even the more amazing stuff. But that’s kind of the whole idea.“

This story was originally published November 24, 2019 at 6:29 PM.