Aesthetic Rescue: Turning Heads and Lifting Spirits.

Color is a powerful thing. Reds can excites us, blues and greens can chill us out, and pinks and yellows will pretty much annoy everyone. Artists spend hours perfecting palettes for our optical pleasure, carefully crafting each blend like a surgeon with a paintbrush (not to be confused with a sturgeon with a paintbrush, which might prove far more entertaining). 

With its run down buildings acting as giant canvases, Detroit offers a perfect and public space for master muralists to spray something beautiful to tease the eyes of passersby. These murals offer a financially, morally, and aesthetically decaying city a picture of hope. It's as if Detroit is screaming "I'm still here!"  Driving south on I-75, the first one reveals itself in all of its intricate glory at exit 54. On the side of the Russell Industrial Building lies the greatest sports mural of all:

On the side of this building, our four major sports mascots collide into one bizarre and pretty cool looking thing. When I first noticed the mural from the highway, I though "oh, cool." However, when I took a closer gander (pretentious for "look"), I noticed many intricate details, all of which were exciting in their own. I stood    for a few minutes with a couple friends (my British buddy, who kept talking about the "colour," and his artsy wife) admiring the work and detail this mural offered. This mural and its beautiful colour and design is a simple way for our rusty city to enhance its image. It's like bubblegum for our eyes.

The next mural, or waterfall of colour, was a short pole vault away at Grand River and Brush. This one looked like someone painted their LSD experience onto bricks:

By taking the picture at an angle, I've made the picture even artsier and more acid-trip like... 

(right?)

The mural--which also looked like Rainbow Bright after one too many PBR's and American Spirits tossed her skittles overboard--looks as cool up close as it does far away. From afar, it looks like a constant toxic waterfall (and I mean "toxic" in the best way possible), spilling into the streets and chasing our cars. From up close, it looks like the same thing, except closer. Here is another cool picture:

(If you turn your computer 90 degrees counterclockwise, or your head 90 degrees clockwise, the picture will make more sense.) 

One might think that the unorganized waterfall of colour looks silly; that it doesn't actually help the cities image. I say it does. Adding an immense colour palette to our city will only help it. And it's cheap. And it's fun. And it's for everyone. 

Murals like these are like life vests for our sinking city, tossed out for all to hug.