Neighborhood-inspired art meets graffiti at Spang Mountain
Northeast Ohio is home to an embarrassment of riches when it comes to unique enduring structures, the stories of which come alive when people rally around them. The latest entry is Spang Mountain: a sprawling 100,000-square-foot structure occupying an entire block in Ohio City.
"It was built by my great-great-grandfather in 1887," says building owner John McGovern. "It's about 35 percent occupied." Spang Mountain spans between West 30th Street and West 26th Place from Barber Avenue to Barber Court. It originally housed a bakery before reverting to rental space. McGovern's father managed it from the 1960s to 2013, when it came under John's stewardship.
The assertion of where do we start? regarding Spang Mountain's empty space aptly applies. McGovern has selected a couple of efforts that combine usage, the arts and a healthy dose of respect for the site's urban neighborhood and its denizens.
Last Saturday, McGovern invited artists to celebrate the building in a community-centered graffiti project, wherein they festooned eight industrial garage doors with fantastical images. McGovern funded the effort via an In Our Back Yard (IOBY) crowd-funding site, with which he raised nearly $500 to provide food, beverages and painting supplies. The artists, including Justin Cownden, Chris Cook, Dayz Whun, Fade Resistant, Jorge Cervantez, the Tall Boyz and Righteous Mothers (visiting from Columbus), donated their time.
With garage doors as canvases, McGovern offered up neighborhood-inspired themes that he developed in tandem with the Barber/Vega/Queen Block Club. The artists were asked to graphically translate the concepts of gardens, helping hands, roots/intergenerational households/lifelong residents, diversity, chickens, bicycles and skateboards.
"Everything we do is in tandem with neighborhood," says McGovern. "I try to go to as many block club meetings as I can."
The artists included a love-struck robot on wheels, a giant blue feline, an eggplant, a screaming hand, carrots, a couple of chickens with serious 'tude and a shout-out to "216 – Cleveland – Ohio."
McGovern describes the Graffiti Garages project as a small art festival and intends to plan other larger events that will involve area kids.
"I think that we definitely want to treat the building as a large canvas when and where we can."
As for the interior of Spang Mountain, McGovern has enlisted TOI Studio to draw up plans for the first phase of the property's transformation. He intends to create artist/maker studios in 5,400 square feet of space on the ground floor of the western section of the structure with the second floor housing digital artists. Being green is priority number one.
"We really want the building to be a showcase for ecological design in terms of retrofitting an older industrial commercial building. What can you do in renovating the building that not only makes it a good place for people to be, but something that returns gifts to the environment?" he poses.
"The first thing we'll address is all the rainwater that hits the building as an impervious surface. How do we channel it into something beautiful and then percolate it back into the ground? That's something we've been looking at for a while." Heating the building with geothermal wells is another eco-friendly option he might pursue. Being bicycle friendly is also a primary consideration.
McGovern's 15 years in middle school education fuels a loftier goal as well: for the future makers inside Spang Mountain to inspire area youths, particularly those not intent on a college track.
"To see someone blowing glass or doing some craftsman-style welding and say, 'Hey, that could be a career for me!'" imagines McGovern, "to have this as an entry point for vocational education, that would be a dream come true for me."
