After her garage was tagged with graffiti repeatedly, Laura Fyfe and her husband Ross, who live in Minneapolis's Powderhorn neighborhood, sought out a creative solution to ward off the vandals.
The graffiti had been happening ever since a windstorm a year ago took down a couple of fences, exposing the garage. It persisted in the winter, and the garage got broken into a few times, as well. "It was turning into a big problem," she says.
At first, Laura and Ross thought a professionally done mural on the garage might do the trick, but it was too expensive.
Just when the couple was about to give up on that possibility, they received a flier in their mailbox from the middle school students at Pillsbury House at 35th and Chicago. They wanted to do a mural on the Fyfe's garage for Earth Day.
Laura and Ross jumped at the opportunity. "We were excited to have it done by the kids in the neighborhood," she says.
When the youth group sketched some ideas for the mural, a beach scene, a dove, and Godzilla came up. "I said, it's all working out too perfectly. I asked them to combine [their ideas] to make it sort of cohesive."
The resulting image includes Godzilla on a beach with flowers streaming out of its mouth. "They took our ideas and made it their own and had a lot of fun doing it," she says.
Using paint and supplies that had been donated or left over from other projects, the children put the final touches on the mural in June. "They did a great job of making it stand out," she says.
Today, her garage has been graffiti-free for five months. "I think they captured something that people like to look at," and therefore don't want to tag. "That's the biggest thing we were going for. We didn't want to have to paint over it."
Also, many passersby are complimentary about the mural, which is only visible from the alley. "Alleys aren't always pretty. It adds color in such a bold way," Fyfe says.
Source: Laura Fyfe
Writer: Anna Pratt