#kevinbate

While relatively little is written about Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night and mother of Hypnos (sleep) and Thanatos (death), she was reported to be of such exceptional power and beauty that she was feared even by Zeus himself. Only natural then that millennia later the all-female @MysticKreweofNyx parade rules the night at Carnival in New Orleans, becoming the celebration’s largest parade in only its sixth year. In Chattanooga, Miki Boni did her part to spread the notoriety of Nyx with this 2014 mural on McCallie Ave for the @GoodWithFaces curated McCallie Walls project. Boni calls herself “a student of character” and says she’s been studying and painting faces most of her life, including starting her career drawing street portraits in New York’s East Village.  @bonimiki

María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (1908–1944) began her career in Mexican vaudeville. Moving to the United States “Lupe” made her first film appearance in 1927 and eventually appeared with such stars as Gary Cooper and Jimmy Durante. Nicknamed “The Mexican Spitfire” her personal life was as colorful as her on-screen persona and at only 36 she took her own life, three months after discovering she was pregnant. In 2014 artist Kevin Bate memorialized Vélez at McCallie and Greenwood Avenues in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The work is part of the McCallie Walls Project curated by Bate and transforming the neighborhood into a drive-through gallery.  @goodwithfaces​  

A few years ago Chattanooga’s Highland Park neighborhood artist and resident Kevin Bate looked around him, looked at the impact art was having in other communities across the country, and decided to take action. Along McCallie Avenue, with initial support from the MakeWork Foundation, he founded the McCallie Walls Project and turned the corridor into a drive-through gallery. In addition to offering paid mural opportunities for local artists it quickly provided an occasion for community pride and participation.... Beginning her career as an illustrator and graphic designer Anna Carll began studying privately with the late Ouida Canaday and a few years later left her commercial practice and devoted herself full-time to painting. 17 years after landing her first gallery representation Carll painted her first mural in 2014—inspired by a T.S. Eliot quote about wisdom and humility—as part of the first phase of McCallie Walls.  @annacarllart  @goodwithfaces​  

After opening fire on a Chattanooga Armed Forces Carreer Center in July, 2015, a lone gunman drove through the gates of a U.S. Navy Reserve facility several miles away and continued his shooting spree, killing four marines and fatally wounding a sailor. . . . Having launched the McCallie Walls Mural Project the previous year—as both a point of pride for Highland Park neighborhood residents, and an opportunity for them to get involved in community transformation—local artist Kevin Bate used the outdoor gallery on McCallie Avenue to respond with these portraits of Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Sullivan, Sergeant Carson Holmquist, Lance Corporal Squire Skip Wells, Staff Sergeant David Wyatt, and Navy Petty Officer Second Class Randall Smith. With so much public attention usually pointed to the perpetrator Bate says one of his goals in creating this work was to keep community focused on those fallen. @goodwithfaces​