I’m kind of fascinated by this.
Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle
For two decades, passersby could easily miss Bud Adams’ vacant midcentury modern building on the Southwest Freeway near Hillcroft.
Not anymore. The low-slung, massive roof over the car dealership, formerly owned by the late NFL Houston Oilers/Tennesse Titans founder, was recently painted yellow with boxy patches of red, Luv Ya blue and white that beam like joyful sunshine.
The design isn’t recognizable unless, maybe, you know the logo of Joyride, the new Houston car leasing company that now owns the building; in which case you could imagine it as one of those magic-eye brain games. That has city sign inspectors seeing red, and it has put the company and popular street artist Sebastien ‘Mr. D’ Boileau in hot water.
The dispute escalated this week after Joyride appealed two citations for violating Houston’s sign codes and the city charged Boileau with not holding a sign painting license, painting an unlawful sign and painting a sign on a roof.
“I’m not a sign painter. I’m an artist,” Boileau said. “It’s a slippery slope for the practice of murals in Houston.”
The trouble began in late January, when a permit to install a sign with Joyride’s logo on its roof was denied. Co-founder and CEO Rick Williams still wanted to do “something fun” with 10,000-square foot surface. “The roof deserves some sort of attention,” he said. “It’s unique, pitched at a low angle, with terrific visibility from the freeway.”
Williams had hired Boileau several years ago to transform a downtown space for his previous company, Texas Direct Auto. “He took this ugly little building and turned it into a ‘colony on Mars,’” Williams said. This time, he asked Boileau to paint a mural that might cleverly incorporate his company’s colors, without text or logos, in a way that would satisfy officials.
Boileau saw an ugly roof and a massive canvas too inviting to resist. “I deliberately, extremely abstracted the imagery with the knowledge that we didn’t want to rub the city the wrong way,” he said. “It’s my artistic interpretation, which had a deliberate goal of not matching the logo — not even a curve of it.”
Inspired by Joyride’s tech-based aesthetic, Boileau pixelated the original four-color imagery, breaking it into blocks of 20 contrasting colors. His execution and materials were strictly street-art driven, he added. “I emptied 100 spray cans that I exploded with screw drivers.”
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Erin Jones, a city Public Works spokesperson, said she couldn’t comment on some aspects of the issue since it goes before an appeals board next month. “I hate for Sebastien to think we’re regulating art,” she said, “but this violates the first commandment of the regulations: No signs on roofs.” Anything with a logo for a business must be done by a licensed sign contractor, she added. “Our sign guys love art. But allowing a logo sets a dangerous precedent for advertising.”
Williams, the Joyride CEO, is not backing down. “It seems obvious to me that it’s art,” he said. “This project took months to develop. It’s not some sign company rolling out vinyl. It was a labor of love.”
The story cites some other examples of murals running into issues because they included logos in them. I get the concern, but maybe there needs to be a bit more flexibility in the code. We’ll see how this shakes out. In the meantime, I feel like I need to do a drive-by and see this for myself. What do you think?
Clearly the City of Houston has found their secret weapon to fight graffiti and taggers….get the sign ordinance inspectors out to bust them! They seem to have real power, whereas the police are powerless to fight graffiti ‘artists.’
The Southwest Freeway from the Loop to the county line is an almost complete portrait of the good, the bad and the ugly. Until now the missing element has been art on a scale that’s visible to passersby on the freeway. That the City considers this installation to be a negative in that sea of visual chaos is just soooo Houston.
I recall the dispute over a large blue saxophone sculpture in the Richmond strip area- art or a sign? I’m siding with art.
I recommend teargassing the artists and holding up a backward upside down Bible.
Let’s end this artistic anarchy.