Take a look at the mural gallery that local artist Khadafy “DAP” Branch has created in a concrete drainage ditch.
For 13 years, DAP has quietly created 40 or so aerosol-art murals inside this three-sided culvert. Whenever he sends out the message “I’ve got a wall,” invited artists come to paint alongside him. Like DAP, I have a strong loyalty to Pleasant Grove, a community often misrepresented in the news and misunderstood by those who don’t live here.
Like many artists, DAP has a day job, quality control in the auto industry, but he pours his passion — and his paycheck — into this urban art and the space in which it resides. Most recently, he’s been working around the clock to buff blank concrete walls in anticipation of Styles Fest. As an old-schooler myself, I appreciated the haunted house leprechaun wall, which DAP did with two elders in the aerosol art community — Butch 2 from New York and Eric “Cre8″ Walker from LA.
As he got older, he studied books about spray-can art, fought through dial-up internet access to do research and watched the work of Pleasant Grove native Ricky Angeles, whom DAP considers his “mentor from afar.” The artist showed up, despite being none too sure he wanted to engage with local government. But Resendez put his credibility on the line to persuade City Hall to support the project — not throw DAP out of the space or paint over his work.
DAP hopes for a day when other artists can submit ideas and potentially get spots on the concrete canvases still available along the culvert. Resendez looks forward to a time when the space is open regularly for community members to access.One of those is Dr. Ricardo Rodriguez, who is both the assistant director at Dallas College, Pleasant Grove Center and chairman of the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
SharonFGrigsby Pleasant Grove doesn’t ‘need’ Art, it needs a Dallas City Council representative who is concerned about the reduction in crime and law enforcement; it needs law enforcement.