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Photo by John Winters shows the mural mostly gone.
Photo by John Winters shows the mural mostly gone.
By the time the social media storm kicked up, it was too late. The stunning Odeith-Eith mural along North Limestone -- a psychedelic mashup of racing Thoroughbreds and stylized graffiti lettering -- was all but gone, blasted away by a contractor’s power-wash blast.
Photos of the damaged mural, created in 2013 by Portugese-born artist Sergio Odeith, began circulating on Twitter and Facebook and with them messages sounding a range of emotions, from sadness and disbelief to anger and conspiracy theory.
In the end, it all seems to have been a simple mistake.
“It was nobody’s fault but mine,” said Griffin VanMeter, whose maverick marketing company Kentucky For Kentucky leases the building. VanMeter said he had contracted to have the back end of the building cleaned and prepped for painting, but that he had no intention of killing the Odeith mural.
“When it was going on this morning, we didn’t know what was happening,” said Jessica Winters, co-founder of PRHBTN, which brought artists from around the globe to create murals in Lexington. “I personally was really upset about it.”
Winters said she’s spoken with VanMeter about the issue and takes him at his word but is still shocked.
“The disbelief comes from the fact that contractors would kill a 30-foot mural without double-checking,” she said.
For his part, VanMeter said he too was in shock after seeing messages once he emerged from taking part in a panel discussion in Louisville.
“Ironically I was out of town talking about creative place-making, which is part of what putting a mural like that is all about,” he said. “When I got out of there my phone was all loaded up (with messages.) ... I immediately called the contractor, but it was too late.”
VanMeter offered apologies on various social media sites where the issue was being discussed. He noted that he worked to get the mural there in the first place, as part of NoLiCDC, which sponsored the mural.
VanMeter said he is trying to reach out to the artist with the aim of bringing him back to town to either rework the mural or produce another one. He said he understands that emotions can run high when public art disappears without notice.
“I think they have a right to be pissed off,” he said. “It takes a lot of work to produce these. ... These are international (artists). i just hope they understand it was an accident.”