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WILKES-BARRE — You can always find art inside Wilkes University’s Sordoni Art Gallery, but this week, thanks to the Tape Art Crew, you’ll see a mural blossom and grow outside on the facade.
“We’re designing it as we go,” said Leah Smith, a co-director of the Rhode Island-based team.
The basic design of the temporary mural, crafted from low-adhesive tape, is a junkyard being transformed into a garden by a group of children.
“I did petals and leaves and carrot stems,” Wilkes University student Jess Morandi, of Long Island, N.Y., said Tuesday, explaining her contribution to the project. “I love working here.”
“I did as far as I could reach,” said non-traditional Wilkes student Gerry DuBoice, of Kingston, pointing to an area where a life-size car and excavator had been drawn with tape.
You don’t have to be a super-confident artist to join in the project, Tape Art founder Michael Townsend said. “If you find a place you’re attracted to, where you like the subject matter, let’s get you involved.”
Whether or not you helped create the mural, Wilkes University and the Providence-rooted Tape Art Crew invite you to visit the Sordoni Gallery at 141 S. Main St. from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, during Wilkes-Barre’s monthly Third Friday Art Walk, and to take part in the “celebratory teardown” that will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Tape Art projects are intended to be temporary, and the low-adhesive tape the artists use adheres to wood, cement, brick, metal, tile and other surfaces without damaging it.
He’s not sad to see the art come down, Townsend said, explaining the teardown is part of the excitement of the project. On week-long projects, he said, “usually by Thursday, I’m really looking forward to it.”
Tuesday’s heavy rainstorms led the artists to design figures of children and lots of garden vegetation on a wall inside the Sordoni building. They would be easy to transfer outside, Townsend said.
The artists of Tape Art Crew have been called the inventors of “tape art” and have created more than 500 large murals and thousands of smaller works on walls around the globe.
“There’s no history of anyone doing this before us,” said Townsend, who started the project 30 years ago.
The Luzerne Foundation and Visit Luzerne County partnered with the Sordoni Art Gallery and the Third Friday Art Block to bring the mural project to Wilkes-Barre.
