Astronaut floats in 18b

11/17/2014

A new mural in the 18b.

Mowgli and Epic in the 18b during ART² Downtown Arts Festival.

There’s another new mural in the 18b. It’s a floating astronaut and sits in view of the parking lot that doubles as a festival space. It’s by EPIC, a graffiti artist and San Francisco native, and Mowgli, a three-year Las Vegas resident from Maryland who attended Virginia Tech, where he studied marketing. Together they worked the wall for the first year of ART² Downtown Arts Festival, a one-day event in the 18b Arts District that was held Saturday.

In the week leading up to Saturday’s event, the two artists prepped and painted the assigned wall and left enough to complete for a live painting demonstration during the festival. The nearly pro-bono project had the statement by these artist’s activist statement become “let’s get more murals up.”

“The scene is growing and styles are changing,” said EPIC, who has been painting for nine years in California, Arizona and Nevada. “The graffiti scene has blown up. It’s moving from the traditional wild style to super contemporary street art.”

“With more and more events the word will get out there. Just more time into the movement will make a difference here in the city.” EPIC said.

“A lot of my style is wild style,” said Mowgli, who is also skilled with stencils. "I can look at a wall and just start going crazy on it and it works out." He likes images that affect the landscape and changes plain buildings. Yet even though he’s a new resident, he stays away from clichés. “The strip is not what Las Vegas is. It’s outside the strip, and it’s what people don’t know until you live here.”

“We got blessed with a good opportunity and we hope to make some waves and maybe get more walls for other artists. We want to see more of this,” adds Mowgli before he flips his mask back on and hits the wall.

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Astronaut floats in 18b

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