Community members use sponges, brushes and grit to scrub graffiti from revered murals
Dalya Perez’s 4-year-old son has learned the names of each Native American figure depicted in the murals on the sides of Wilson-Pacific School. There’s Chief Sitting Bull, Chief Seattle, Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Since Perez and her family moved to Seattle a year ago, they’ve gone to the school’s fields every day, where the 25-foot-tall portraits look out over the baskeball court.
“It’s basically our backyard,” she said. “The murals are stunningly beautiful and every day that I see them I feel like they are the guardians of our neighborhood, reminding us that we live on sacred and indigenous ground.”
So on Feb. 22, when her son, Carlos, saw that the murals had been defaced with white, splattered graffiti, he was sad and confused. He didn’t understand why anyone would want to destroy images of Native Chiefs.
But this act of vandalism that devastated the community quickly became the seed of something joyful: Community members banded together to clean and restore the murals, and just a few days after the vandal or vandals struck, it was as if it never happened.
“It’s a true act of benevolence and compassion from the community: They are the greatest force,” said Andrew Morrison, the artist who painted the murals.
Morrison began painting the first of eight murals at Wilson-Pacific in 2001, and this was the first time one of them had ever been defaced.
On Feb. 24, Morrison and his father, Gary Morrison, began reaching out for help, orchestrating an emergency cleanup that would happen rain or shine.
The community did more than step up to the challenge: They brought ladders.
At 9 a.m. the next day, people started showing up in the morning drizzle, lugging tools, pressure washers, sponges and brushes. “All these men I’d never met in my life showed up with trucks and ladders and said, ‘We’re here to help,’” Morrison said.
Perez, a University of Washington graduate student, came early in the day with her son. Knowing how much he had learned about historic Native figures from the murals, she decided to turn this into a lesson, too.
“It felt like a great opportunity as a parent to teach my son about rolling up our sleeves and being part of the solution to make things right,” she said.
He used a small brush to work away at the graffiti, alongside a handful of friends and neighbors.
“There was a spirit of camaraderie and love there,” Perez said. “It was so powerful to scrub the damage and see it rinse away. It was very healing and empowering.”
Roughly four hours after the cleanup began, the paint that had stretched nearly to the top of the murals — sprayed with a fire extinguisher — was gone.
Morrison said the cold temperatures in the few days after the tagging were vital, since heat can speed up the drying process. The paint was still soft when cleaning began, and the tag came off without harming the art underneath.
“I’ve been around art and painting and graffiti my whole life, and I’ve never seen paint come off the wall like that,” he said. “This weather played such a key factor. I believe Mother Nature had a little stake in this.”
Wilson-Pacific is slated for demolition by Seattle Public Schools (SPS) and will be replaced with two new school buildings. Morrison and members of the Native community fought for nearly a year and a half to prevent the destruction of the murals, eventually reaching an accord with the school district that the murals would be preserved, stored and reincorporated into new construction.
The vandal struck less than a month before construction is scheduled to start.
Idris Beauregard, graffiti manager for Seattle Public Utilities, said it is unusual to see a mural targeted for tagging.
“There’s supposed to be a code among taggers that you don’t deface a mural,” he said. “It’s very rare.”
Perez had to leave the cleanup after an hour, and at that point, it seemed like a job that was going to take days. When she heard the murals had been completely restored, she had to see for herself. She went straight back after work to give Morrison a hug.
“In some ways, I think the murals look even better than before,” Perez said. “They are gleaming, triumphant and glowing in a new way.”