<p>Joey: I'm in Aurora, Illinois, and most people would see a wall like this with paint literally chipping off of it and think nothing of it. But today I'm going to talk to Jenn, who sees an empty canvas, and Aurora is literally leading the charge in activating local economy through art with murals, such as this one. Let's go check it out.</p> <p>Jenn: Hey, Joey. How are you?</p> <p>Joey: Jenn, how we doing?</p> <p>Jenn: Yeah, thanks for coming out.</p> <p>Joey: Thanks for having... This is a beautiful mural. What is it that you do for the city of Aurora?</p> <p>Jenn: I'm the Director of Public Art.</p> <p>Joey: Director of Public Art. So what specifically is your role?</p> <p>Jenn: Well, it's a department of the city under community services. So there's basically three things. We put up public art outside and we do that to support community development, community space making, as well as economic development, bringing people especially to the downtown, to more visitors, more repeat customers at businesses.</p> <p>Joey: Yeah.</p> <p>Jenn: I want everything to be accessible and playful and everything multifunctional, but also beautifully designed.</p> <p>Joey: So as we were walking here, I actually saw this massive bird that I've never seen in my life before. And it's right here and over there in real life. So tell me about this mural.</p> <p>Jenn: So this was done in 2018 by Bunnie Reiss. She is from LA and has done murals all over the world. And we were really lucky to get her to come out. This was one of the first four murals that were done in 2018. The ordinance was only passed in 2016 to allow us to do murals in the city at all for the first time ever. And the first four went up in 2018 or were completed.</p> <p>Joey: I mean, that's great. I really love seeing this and walking around and even you pointing out the potential spots for it. So let's go take a look at some other locations.</p> <p>Jenn: Sure, sure. So this is artist that his name is Stuk One. He's in Chicago. And this was a project specifically to go up by that Yeti arcade. So all those vintage video games, and we're really excited that that's opening. So that was a private project with the developer, and that went up in 2019.</p> <p>Joey: Okay, Jenn. Tell me about this. Why am I a flower?</p> <p>Jenn: This was the one artist who did something a little interactive, although they're all really fun, they're all really cool. So we did 11 downtown in 2018, and this year we're doing six more. I found out after we started that the state routes, route 25 and route 31 that run through each side of the downtown, we can't do those routes. We may have done a few. They're really good ones.</p> <p>Joey: Wink, wink. We may have done a few.</p> <p>Jenn: Yeah. So we're sort of running out of utility boxes downtown now because we can't do 25 and 31.</p> <p>Joey: Sure. Jenn Evans: But we'd like to start doing them in the neighborhoods anyway. And then kids in that hyper local area or in front of some of the schools where there's a traffic light can do those as well. Those kids can do them.</p> <p>Joey: We're standing. I don't see any art. Why are we here?</p> <p>Jenn: So this is going to be a place for wild style, the graffiti font from seventies, eighties, nineties-</p> <p>Joey: Right.</p> <p>Jenn: ... and different live painting. This is going to be the first opportunity that local artists have to not provide a design that has to go through city council because that's not what that art medium is. It's immediate and they're designing it as they go. It's like the improv of painting.</p> <p>Joey: Right.</p> <p>Jenn: So it has to be spontaneous. And then that art is not meant to last forever either. So the plan is is that every year we'll redo the art and other people will get an opportunity. And maybe some of the same people will get an opportunity. We're still figuring it out, but I was very excited to get that through city council that we could give these artists respect. There's something called "meeting of styles" that's all over the world where these amazing street artists come and do pieces. And so this is our little tiny meeting of styles.</p> <p>Joey: Okay. It's all happening, right? Freedom, graffiti.</p> <p>Jenn: It's all happening.</p> <p>Joey: I knocked out another dad joke. Cool, this is great. I can't wait to see what happens. (silence)</p>