For Art on the Beltline 2014, I managed the creation and installation of 45x45: Neighbors Connected, a large scale wheat paste mural and community photography project done in collaboration with the Inside Out Project. We assigned 45 Atlanta photographers to 45 in-town neighborhoods, gave them a neighborhood representative as a resource, and then let them find the portrait subject that spoke to them. We printed all 45 portraits in partnership with the international participatory mural project The Inside Out Project, and then wheatpasted them as a large 15 foot by 50 foot mural along the Beltline at North Avenue. To foster the narrative story behind each portrait, we also collected and archived the stories from each portrait session at the 45x45 Project website.

To me, the final mural was an artifact of an even more important work of art: what happens as we take Atlanta photographers out of their own neighborhood and into another. It’s about connecting and showing the many faces of Atlanta – what makes us all different, but even more importantly, what makes us all the same.