These Walls Talk

The Evolution of Austin Street Art

East Austin’s emergence as a catalyst for evocative, identity-based public art is no accident. It’s the latest chapter in a story that has unfolded over the last 70+ years.

In a city well-known for its public art, few murals are more ubiquitous than Daniel Johnston’s “Jeremiah the Innocent,” perhaps better known as the smiling “Hi, How Are You?” frog that has pleasantly observed the corner of Guadalupe and 21st streets since 1993, when it was commissioned by the record store Sound Exchange.

When Sound Exchange closed its doors ten years later, it sent a tremor through the city. Austin was entering an undeniable boom period, and yet the “Live Music Capital of the World” had just lost an iconic community hub for its music lovers.

Jeremiah and his agreeable disposition suddenly stood in stark contrast to the economic forces reshaping the city, and neighborhood advocates ensured his preservation when the next tenants threatened his home.

Two more decades of intense growth followed, and in mid-2023, a cavalry of wrecking balls razed everything on Jeremiah’s block, paving the way for a student housing tower.

Yet, Jeremiah endures, seemingly unbothered.

With his stack of painted bricks carefully cropped, reinforced, and propped up with large, steel braces, his evolving context suggests an equally evolving relationship with the city whose ethos he helped define.

As Austin enjoys a prolonged renaissance of public art and muralism amidst another impending era of growth, Jeremiah’s perennial question is more relevant than ever.
Hi, how are [we]?

The Pioneers

Like the fabric of the city itself, the threads that weave the history of Austin’s street art and mural scene have multiple origins.

Less than a block from Jeremiah, Seymour Fogel’s “Creation” is cited as Austin’s oldest mural, painted in 1949 within a recessed entrance to University Baptist Church. A colorful blend of allegory and abstraction, its fresco-like finish has left it well-preserved. Seymour taught at the University of Texas, having previously apprenticed under Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and, in 1954, produced the iconic modernist “American National Bank Mural” preserved today within the McGarrah Jessee Building downtown.

The coming decades would see muralism blossom, and 1974’s “Austintatious” by Kerry Awn, Tom Bauman, and Rick Turner was a critical catalyst. Its large scale and intricate details elaborately tell the story of both Austin and Texas against two sprawling walls bookending the Drag’s Renaissance Market.

The pioneering muralists created resonant work rooted in identity and place, and the Eastside yielded especially celebrated pieces like “Hillside Miracle,” painted by Raúl Valdez in 1978. Raúl prioritized widespread community engagement in his process, canvassing local neighborhoods and circulating hundreds of opinion surveys. His activist work incorporated themes of justice, resistance, and protest, derived from his Chicano heritage.

Likewise, John Fisher’s “Voyage to Soulsville” appeared on the Eastside in 1986. Dramatic, colorful, and enormous, it is located at the George Washington Carver Library, depicting “a voyage through the discovery of Black identity.” The Carver Branch, which originally opened in 1933, was Austin’s first segregated branch serving Black Austinites. The Carver still stands today, centrally located in East Austin, serving to honor the heritage of Black citizens. Moreover, the “Voyage to Soulsville” has no intentions of leaving its permanent home on the Carver’s south wall and was recently restored to its original vibrancy.

Also in 1986, Austin Community College helped legitimize a very different kind of emerging street art, hosting an exhibition of graffiti curated by the East Austin photographer and historian Chale Nafus. By acknowledging the emergence of this guerilla art form while celebrating its ephemerality, techniques, and community of rebellion, artists like Al “SKAM” Martinez gained notoriety, reflecting a formative piece of Austin’s early identity back onto itself.

Street art flourished in the mid ’80s and throughout the ’90s, and stickers, slaps, stencils, and tags became synonymous with the city’s punkish identity as a creative slacker town with the world’s best live music. The vibrant graphic arts community flourished as well, their work affording the city an abundance of rich art landmarks.

These pioneer artists lent identity to their communities through their work. With plenty to say, the artists of this time produced a blend of style and heritage that, when taken collectively, could exist nowhere else.

Stretching the Canvas

An Era of Growth

As Austin careened into the 21st century, the public art scene evolved in tandem.
Some artists, like Sloke (@slokeone), emerged as a throughline between these eras, indicative of East Austin’s burgeoning influence upon the city at large.

A prolific graffiti artist who credits SKAM for his start in the early 1990s, Sloke began producing commissioned murals and graffiti canvases in the early 2000s, helping to both elevate and preserve the vanguard of the early scene. Today, his work can be seen in galleries and throughout the Eastside, including a recent collaboration with PAWS (@dogslobber) celebrating Austin’s summer of style.
“New artists are emerging year after year, and it’s a beautiful thing to see,” Sloke explains in the foreword of ATX Urban Art, written and curated by J Muzacz. “But if a scene is to survive, it also needs to be passed on to the next generation. That’s what keeps it going.

Looking around the Eastside today, it’s easy to spot the next generation, an emergent collection of diverse voices. Yet, just as present is the work of artists who sustained and expanded upon the efforts of the pioneers.

Also active since the mid ’90s, Mez Data (@mezdata) lent his signature portrait and writing style to this era, earning local and national acclaim for his immersive pieces and precise techniques.
Bill Tavis, whose art spans from writing graffiti to writing code, has an unmistakable visual identity that can be found across East Austin at places like the Austin Blessings Co-Op, Native Hostel, and The Yard, to name a few. His use of half tones creates vibrant, mathematical murals that resonate with a potent visual frequency.

As the city continued to boom, the Eastside became Austin’s art epicenter; yet, the pace of development often came at a cost. In 2014, celebrated artist Chris Rogers (@chrisrogersart) contributed his first mural to the city, taking no pay for what would become a beloved illustration of Black musicians at 12th and Chicon, the place known as the heart of Austin’s Black community. Three years later, it was abruptly covered in white paint – a literal whitewashing.

Dive Deeper:
Take a comprehensive look at Austin’s art in ATX Urban Art: Layers of Graffiti, Street Art, Murals, and Mosaics in Austin, Texas, written and curated by local artist J Muzacz. jmuzacz.com

Few acts have so clearly personified the Eastside’s struggle to preserve its core identity, and the bellow of outrage from the local community led to a meeting between Chris and the new property owners. Within weeks, local nonprofit Six Square had agreed to commission Chris for a new mural in its place, which would also involve community input. “We Rise” was completed later that year, a befitting title for a piece so emblematic of a community empowered to reclaim its voice.

Make Work, Make Change
The Enduring Power of Advocative Art

Taking the long view when reflecting on the evolution of Austin’s street art puts the stakes of the current moment into clear focus.

As the Eastside has grown, so too have the forces that affect its population of artists and the work they produce. The commercial popularization of murals has led to an influx of large, corporate commissions – a good thing for a community of artists at risk of displacement as costs of living rise.
An active muralist since 2015, Fabián Rey (@fabianrey) has imbued the murals and posters of corporate brands with a quintessential illustration style. His work for Austin FC is widely recognizable to soccer fans beyond Austin’s city limits

“We are headed into a public art renaissance, because people are beginning to see the power of the process in their communities. We can be that city that stands up and protects the art community here by continuing to elevate public art through policy, funding, and support from Austinites, giving artists an ecosystem where they can thrive.” Raasin McIntosh, Founder,
Raasin In The Sun

Raasin in the Sun, a multicultural nonprofit founded by former Olympian Raasin McIntosh (@raasininthesun), has emerged as a critical facilitator for East Austin’s artists, the city, and its local and corporate advocates.

Since 2015, Raasin and her team have engaged with artists and community stakeholders to promote the voices of women and people of color, helping to amplify identity-based work that serves broader community interests. As a steward of the art community and the city’s underserved populations at large, the organization helps maintain artist equity through public art activations, creative place-making, and service.

Recent initiatives include the expansive “Harvesting Hope” mural at Huston-Tillotson University, as well as a partnership with the City of Austin on the “Rosewood Pillars Project,” curated by Public City. The project invited six artists to contribute murals to the pillars supporting the Pleasant Valley Bridge at the EastLink Trail, providing documentary materials and workshops to aid the artists.

Will Hatch Crosby, one of the participating artists who grew up in Holly, focused his attention on Austin’s history of segregation and desegregation and the Eastside’s civil rights activism that resisted discriminatory policies, like city trash burning, that once took place exclusively in East Austin’s lower income neighborhoods.

“Hola Friend,” one of Will’s first large murals in Austin, can be seen at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Robert T. Martinez Jr., a playful black and white homage to Daniel Johnston’s “Jeremiah the Innocent” featuring two whimsical creatures exchanging a cheerful, bilingual greeting.
Other recent forward-thinking initiatives from the city include Austin’s Neighborhood Partnering Program, which funded over 900 feet of murals along Bolm Road in Govalle, highlighting the neighborhood’s past, present, and future. The project was led by Raasin and her team in partnership with the Govalle Neighborhood Association.

As the city’s drumbeat of development continues its course, engaging – and funding – artists and their communities is critical to sustaining the advocacy of those who make the Eastside vibrant, resonant, and real.