"Castle Hill -Austin, Texas"
Written by Timothy McVain
January 24, 2014
There is a quiet hill overlooking
downtown Austin where artists great and small come to put their mark.
On their canvas of walls, trekking through a corn stalk covered dusty
hill or climbing up shiny, sticky painted cement slabs, they have
come to show off their talent and paint what's on their mind. From
images representing or criticizing politicians to larger than life
faces, eyes, and mouths; the artist illustrates and sprays from the
colors within themselves. There's stenciled faces and caricatures on
the bottom of one side of the ten foot wall and colorful layers of
different images and words on the other. This is a shrine to the
human spirit set free. Expressing ones innermost ideologies and
feelings in an easily understood, artistic way communicating to every
passerby until their work is covered up by another's.
“LOVE IS GOD” stood out to me as I
walked below the towering painted walls and stood above it all.
Looking down seeing everything from a different perspective I noticed
things I missed on the ground, sometimes having stood right next to
it. Even going through my photos revealed hidden messages and
beautiful shrouded faces covered by stylized words.
The experience at Castle Hill reminded
me of my first visit to the San Antonio Museum of Art where I was
completely overwhelmed and impassioned by seeing and being surrounded
by all the precious, beautiful, masterful art and artifacts. I left
that with a heavy heart, truly amazed at the human capacity for
creating beauty and I walked away from the hill with a similar
feeling that I had just walked through sacred ground. I wanted to
kick off my shoes and fall on my face in the tan dirt and worship
this monument to imagination and creative expression.
Atop the hill was the castle, standing
with clean brick walls and resting safely, at ease behind a tall
impenetrable metal fence with sharp points. Standing there in the
sunlight like a proud sentinel daring everyone to just try and
approach it, I realized that perhaps I was looking at it incorrectly
and judging it prematurely. I began to imagine the castle being a
gracious landlord, a kind king who graciously shared his land, this
hill, with everyone and invited artists from all walks of life to
come and put their name on the slabs of concrete. Whatever the
spiritual significance of the castle, it provided a stark contrast in
color, style, and shape from the art filled hill below.
Looking out from the top of the hill,
standing on names and shapes painted by hundreds to thousands of
artists, I saw the entire skyline of the magical city of Austin,
Texas. At my left was The University of Texas clock tower, Texas
State Capitol, and then to my left began the towering skyscrapers and
swinging construction cranes ending at the farthest extent of my
peripheral vision. It was a view like this captured by one of my
followers and a helpful online map that led me to the hill. Far
below, as I climbed down the sides of walls and through rocky spaces
between corn stalks, a man played a banjo while another played music
through speakers and juggled or waved ribbons.
“Keep Austin Weird”
is alive and well here, one of the few remaining places in Austin
that seem to have been saved from progress and overpopulous growth.
I'll be back to bathe in those wall's shadows and lie under the
words, faces, colors, giraffes, and creatures sprayed by imaginative,
inspiring young and old nameless people.
Follow Me!
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