I always seem to plan my life a certain way and then end up taking a wrong turn ending up in a completely different place than I originally thought I would be at. I’m not going to say it’s ‘destiny’ since that sounds cheesy to me, however, I always wonder if those wrong turns end up taking me somewhere that is far greater than where I was originally going.
This happens to me quite often, particularly occurring about two weeks ago. I was supposed to go to The Counter Café to write a review but was too hungry to wait in line for 40 minutes in order to finally get something in my stomach, especially after the long night I had.
My friends and I decided to walk north on Lamar in search of food and came across a quaint walk up called Fresa’s. Once we ordered our food we kept trekking until we came to the cross streets of Baylor and 12th only to come upon massive, abandon, broken down condos.
Officially known as the Local to Global Outdoor Gallery Project, Austin’s Castle Hill graffiti (named after the castle-looking building that used to be the Texas Military Institute) originally showcased 6 brown and beige square panels in the 1980’s representing the HOPE campaign’s mission to connect artists to global issues. With the support from the property’s owners, Dick Clark Architecture and Castle Hill Partners, Shephard Fairey’s professional and highly commercialized posters covered the center level of Castle Hill.
From Shephard Fairey to the anonymous street artists who have tagged these crumbling walls and pipes with their colorful hues, graphics and bold colors, Castle Hill is a haven for artists and dreamers, a place that is filled with inspiration, and a place where self-expression is painted within the weeds and concrete ruins of this abandon lot. Castle Hill never intended on being a habitat for graffiti artists to paint/tag highly complex pictures, which as of July 2012 had over 100 pieces and over 300 tags, but then again that is the nature of street art.