A group of teenage artists have cleaned up graffiti, added a fresh coat of paint and installed a large, colorful mural entitled "Waterworks" on a long vacant gas station at West 45th and Detroit Avenue in Ohio City. The artwork, which was created by the nonprofit Building Bridges Arts Collaborative, aims to raise awareness of water pollution issues in Cleveland and create job opportunities for local youth. 

"We wanted to take something that is spoiled, raise it onto the wall and transform it into something beautiful," says Katherine Chilcote, Executive Director of Building Bridges, who created the mural based on photographs of water in everyday life such as car windshields, sewer grates and oily puddles in parking lots. "We focused on this site because it needed beautification."

The former BP gas station was tagged with graffiti, littered with trash and poorly maintained when it was selected as the site for the Waterworks mural. Chilcote, local youth and volunteers from St. Paul's Community Church removed 10 bags of trash and painted over the graffiti. Provenzale Construction at 4529 Detroit donated labor to install the mural on their building and the former BP. 

The mural project started in 2010, when Chilcote began working with the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization and the Cleveland Police Department to map locations where crime, graffiti and abandoned buildings were most prevalent. The corner of Detroit and West 45th naturally stood out.  

"The building was constantly being tagged," says Chilcote. "There's also a bus stop there, so we knew it was a high-traffic area that needed to be improved."  

Waterworks was inspired by 19th-century maps of local watersheds. After researching the area's buried creek beds, Chilcote dreamed of ways to artistically 'free' these waterways. Waterworks uses images of water runoff shaped by its urban environment to explore the beauty and degradation of water in Cleveland.

Although not quite as flashy as the 300-foot cranes that now hover over downtown, thanks to the Flats East Bank and Med Mart projects, Chilcote says her program provides paid internships and job training for youth.

"It's really another form of economic development," she says. "The kids that worked on this mural are saying, 'We're taking this corner back.' Through the process, they learn to see their community in a new way."

Source: Katherine Chilcote
Writer: Lee Chilcote
Disclosure: Katherine Chilcote is the writer's sister.