Daniel Blue and a Downtown Banner Project (24. May 2007, 09:18 by Derek Young) ~ Doing Good Work

Written by Taylor Buck

“There’s a lot of energy in this city right now, boiling up underneath the ground, that is about to explode. This could be the necessary artistic element that could really make it burst.”

Kira Doley, Downtown Tacoma Farmer’s Market manager

26-year-old local poet and artist Daniel Blue hopes to “lead the charge” by way of art as he hashes a new path in the possibilities of the community. The path will appear in the form of semi-permanent banners along Broadway, the unveiling of which will occur May 21. The project is in connection with the “Go Local” campaign and the downtown farmer’s market. Each banner will display one line of a 20-line poem written by Blue.

“The biggest struggle in downtown is that it’s an infrastructure without a culture,” Paul Sparks, mentor and close friend to Blue, said. “We haven’t invested the best of our energies and the best of our time to say, ‘What is the story of the city? How can we bring to life the story of our place?’”

Patricia Lecy-Davis, owner of Embellish salon and president of the Downtown Merchants Group met with with fellow DMG member and Urban X Change owner Julie Bennett and Chamber of Commerce board member Paul Ellis to discuss the finding of an artist to replace the banners. Both Lecy-Davis and Bennett suggested Blue.

“We share a vision with the Chamber of Commerce, and that is getting feet on the streets,” Lecy-Davis said. “That sounds like a simple task, but it’s not. You’ve got to get people out of their cars, out of their businesses and out on the streets so they can have chance meetings – so we can become a community instead of being in our cars and driving to the store with a purpose. This was a way to connect Daniel as a young bulleted artist, to the importance of building the community.”

“Daniel is a friend to the city,” Sparks said. “He’s a friend to the people here. Most everybody knows him by name downtown. We know his weak points and we know his strong points, but more than that we know that he’s one of us and he’s for us.”

Blue formulated a proposal for the Chamber of Commerce that consisted of a suggested total of 100 banners: five placements of 20 banners around the city, all of which would hang for one year. Upon review, the Chamber suggested that Blue complete only one set of banners at first. “Paul Ellis basically came to us and said, ‘I think it’s a really good idea, but I need my board to buy in on it and it’d be great if you could give us a sample,’” Lecy-Davis said.

Blue decided to use poetry as the content, and to write the first poem about the downtown farmer’s market, the opening day of which was May 17. In search of inspiration, he took a walk along the paths of Wright Park with Kira Doley, full-time manager of the farmer’s market. “He just wanted to talk about what I thought was important to say about the market,” Doley said. “I really wanted him to write about the farmer. Farmers are a group of people I’ve become fascinated by. I think they’re often forgotten – maybe not entirely forgotten, but underappreciated. Especially in a time when our society has lost a lot of connection with food.

“What I really wanted to express through Daniel is that farming is not just a labor job – it’s an art. Like architecture, or painting. That’s something I don’t think the average Joe would recognize or appreciate.”

“When I listened to Kira Doley I was blown away,” Blue said. “I was fully inspired. All I wanted the poem to do was take what she had told me and put it into an easy-to-digest form. I’ve often been conscious of what I eat, and I really appreciate the farmer’s market, but Kira opened my eyes to the art of farming. [Farmers] are at the mercy of things like weather and temperature. Their livelihood is invested in a plot of land. They believe in it so much that they’re betting the farm on it. It feels so good to support that kind of mentality.” He partnered with graphic designer Glen Weiman and began to formulate an idea.

In the process of pushing this project through, the artists and organizers involved have worked closely with the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce. “When you’re working with a bureaucracy, with an organization that deals with deliverables, there’s always some red tape and some selling that has to happen,” Lecy-Davis said.

“There are a lot of hoops to jump through,” Blue said, “but that’s just the way things are. You just learn how to work with it because it’s important – because god damn it, there are going to be at least twenty if not more banners with really rad artwork and poetry on them hanging downtown and it’s worth it. It really is.”

The process of networking and the concept of communal growth is a thread among the ideas of those involved. Lecy-Davis hopes for Blue to, as an artist with roots in the heart of the city, “get a chance to bridge the gap between government agencies and the grass roots street poet or artist. It’s been an amazing journey with him,” Lecy-Davis said. “If anybody makes the connection between the heart and Tacoma, I think it can be Daniel Blue.”

“The beauty of Daniel is that he is an artist and a bridge-maker,” Sparks said. “He’s someone who says, ‘I’m not just interested in expressing myself, I’m interested in building a bridge on both sides of my heart’.”

With the hanging of the banners, the downtown environment will be met by not only the physical presence of the poetry but by what Blue sees as an opportunity for further bridge-building and art dispay in the city.

“Ultimately for me this is a way to take my community and the people I love and lead the charge into this foreign section of society,” Blue said. “The city is taking a little risk with me. I’m established and I have people behind me saying I do good work, so their risk isn’t that heavy, but that little risk could lead to more risks. The more risk being taken the more magic that is going to happen. Good things don’t come from being safe and hiding.”

This risk is not only prevalent on the side of the Chamber; Blue is creating something that has not be attempted. The average city-goer is not familiar with a walking poem; a completely different banner every few yards; a puzzle without the average motive of the advertisements that suffocate cities. “Traditionally the business world tends to center on the tag line or the quick marketing scheme. I think people in this time frame are kind of burnt out on that. We are experts at seeing through it because we’ve been bombarded by it for so long. People want to live and shop in a place where there’s some mystery, some sense of, ‘I belong on this journey and in this place, I can follow this trail’.”

“Daniel has these pieces that move you along a pathway. As the poem and images grow, it speaks to the fact that we’re not so much trying to grab your attention and sell you something, as allow you to be a part of the life and the mystery and the beauty of this place.”

In order to further the growth of art in the city, connections must be made among the artists and the city’s political leaders. “I don’t know how city officials and leaders come to a place where they realize how important art is,” Blue said. “I know it’s important. I’d much rather live in a place with beautiful things than ugly things. I think the more art that is downtown the more people will begin to appreciate it, care about it and want it. I’m sure every city official has at least some kind of decoration in their house. I don’t think their walls are just blank, and I highly doubt their walls are covered in advertisements and billboards. Nobody wants to live in that kind of environment.”

Blue moved to Tacoma in 2004, and has since grown immensely as an artist, writer and person. “This city has shaped me,” Blue said. “It’s drawn a lot of my best qualities to the surface because I love it. When you care about something you start to fight for it. You start to develop the parts of you that are going to help you in your path to making that a better place. Much of said growth can be credited to those who Daniel came in contact with when he moved.

“My writing has improved vastly. Paul would have me write and read aloud a new poem every week on certain topics that groups were meeting about. I would open a different meeting every week. That really shaped my ability to confidently speak to a target or a demographic. It wasn’t always positive, but I’m really glad that I put myself through that as a writer because I’m able to approach this project in full confidence. I’m totally prepared for this.”

“He came to Tacoma with such a free and open spirit and wanted to connect to a community so greatly,” Lecy-Davis said. “I’ve watched him grow as a person, and want to honor himself and take his art to the next level. He says I’m his mentor, but I get to learn ten-fold from him.”

Blue recognizes the growth as well. “If this project would have landed in my lap when I first moved here, I wouldn’t have known what to do. It would have terrified me. I didn’t know anything about the city, and I didn’t know anything about what I thought was really important.”

“The biggest lesson I’ve learned is how to connect to people in a reciprocal relationship. Personal growth aside, the relationships I have built in Tacoma have allowed me to do the things I do. This project in particular would have been impossible without the amazing artwork of Glen Weiman and the networking of Patrica Lecy-Davis.”

“I hope this project shows artists that it’s safe to work with the city, I hope it helps them to imagine the place they live as their canvas. Perhaps it won’t be as scary for people to jump into that pool once they see that I jumped in and was able to swim.”