On a Personal Note: Ian Wilkinson
Story by Jim Murphy | Photo by Megan Authement
From first-time visitors to lifelong residents, people in Asheville agree that this is a beautiful place. Muralist Ian Wilkinson is trying to make it even more beautiful—one wall at a time.
Since moving to the mountains seven years ago, Ian has decorated the city with more than 60 murals.
He explains his attraction to this specialized nook of the art world. “I like making some big piece of artwork and just leaving it there.” A quick grin, and he adds, “I like to do things for the community.”
Ian tells his story while sitting in a paint-splotched chair against an electric blue wall that displays his painting of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar, along with an eclectic display of images, ranging from a circus clown to splashes and squiggles of random color.
He explains that his works are on display in public places around the city, such as the Merrimon Avenue underpass beneath I-240, the Aloft Hotel, Mellow Mushroom and Blue Dream Curry restaurants, and several City schools, among other spaces. He also recently completed an installation at the Cradle of Forestry Museum in Pisgah Forest.
Against the traditional image of the lonely muralist high on a scaffold dabbing bits of color onto a brick wall, technology has given today’s artists a soft fiber surface that allows them to do their actual painting in the studio and then mount the piece later.
“We paint on Polytab,” Ian says, reaching for a strip of the stuff tacked on that blue wall. It looks like a polyester fabric in his hands as he crushes it into a ball and lets it return to its original wrinkle-free shape. “You want a mural that will last a hundred years, but if you apply the paint directly to a wall, it will eventually peel and crack under the changing night-and-day temperatures and extremes in the weather. This material is mold and weather resistant.” It also allows him to work in the cozy confines of his studio during the winter months.
Nowadays, Ian needs those winter months to complete a strong roster of orders. He says business in Asheville is so brisk that it can support about eight full-time muralists. “It’s sustainable. We can all get work,” he says. “But about 80 percent of my orders come from out of town.” He and his partner, Angeline Fornof, have three children, and he measures his professional success by his domestic well-being. “I support a family of five and the bills are all paid and we’re doing fine,” he says.
Ian attributes his popularity to the fact that, at age 40, he has been painting murals for more than 20 years. He has built up a reputation, but, he says, “it isn’t easy. It’s very difficult to be a muralist if you’re not willing to treat it like a job.” He lists frustrating aspects such as dealing with the occasional fussy client, applying for grants—all those details that never show up on the wall.
“When you’re starting out you’ve got to work 60- to 70-hour weeks for three years or more before it becomes a thing where you don’t have to sweat all the time.”
And then? He shakes his head, lets out a soft laugh, and says, “It’s hard to get paid for being a muralist because people know you love it.”
Beyond his art, Ian has expanded his civic presence. “I got involved with graffiti removal because, as a muralist, I could become a release valve for the tension that was building between the city, the building owners who were caught in the middle, and the graffiti community. And I mean that term,” he says. “There is a real graffiti community.”
On one downtown building, he got a contract to remove the graffiti—with an important twist. After the offensive tags were covered up, he invited graffiti artists to work on the same wall. He then wrote a contract with the city saying the new tags comprised a sanctioned mural and it was no longer simply graffiti. “We made a graffiti production where artists could work in broad daylight and spend time on it to make it really good.”
That eventually led to an annual project called Burners and BBQ, which held its most recent event at the Asheville wastepaper warehouse in the River Arts District last May. “I started by just helping out, filling in background colors, doing whatever I could. And this year I was the producer of the whole event. We used 60 artists—half of them graffiti writers, some muralists and some street artists. Their wall was 22 thousand square feet. We divided it into sections and set them loose. Everyone was elated to be working on the wall together.”
Ian’s speech flows easily, one story transitioning into another, but he stopped cold, even stammered, at one question: Do you have a remaining daydream?
“Just to keep doing…” He stopped, looking for a different way to say it. “I’m living the daydream. Like, this is it.”
Jim Murphy, of East Asheville, is a retired television news reporter and former copy editor for the Los Angeles Times. Reach him at jimurph41@gmail.com.