“This Old House”

“This Old House,” an old Victorian-style home near the Third Ward, was formerly a daycare and covered in what GONZO247 describes as “scary monsters.” (Actually, they were badly airbrushed likenesses of Sesame Street characters.) “Diane Barber at DiverseWorks approached us and asked if we’d be down to paint the house, says GONZO247. “We said, ‘Hell yeah!’” GONZO247 and Christian Azul of the graffiti collective Aerosol Warfare were given 100 percent creative control over the project, and the result now stands (out) at the corner of Alabama and Almeda. GONZO247 and Azul, along with artist Weah, painted the front of the building purple, which gradually fades to every color of the rainbow as it wraps around the entire house. The trio then added embellishments like a Picasso quote — “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction” — that also wraps around the house. “Most people are freaked out by the quote,” says GONZO247. “The word ‘destruction’ seems to scare people for some reason. It’s actually a quote from the almighty Picasso!” The front of the house is stenciled to look like a Louis Vuitton pattern, only with “AW” replacing “LV.” The other sides feature a graffiti-esque design of rectangles and colorful swirls.

GONZO247 says the finished product is the result of numerous redesigns and even a couple of do-overs. “We actually had a totally different layout for the blue side,” he says. “We completely finished [it], and decided we did not like it, so we decided to paint over it.” To the artists, the resulting evolving color scheme represents the ever-evolving spirit of DiverseWorks as much as Aerosol Warfare’s artistic style. “We wanted to have the house be the main focus of the project and the spray paint be like the buttons and zippers that make parachute pants cool, you know what I mean?” Word. Open house today at 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. 1625 Alabama. For information, call 713-223-8346 or visit www.diverseworks.org. Free.
Tue., Oct. 30, 5-7 p.m., 2007