If you listen to your public radio station or frequent the local library, you’re well aware that public funding is on the line. The same applies to grants for artists creating the murals that beautify our cities.
“I think people are afraid to spend arts grants that they have left, because we don’t know the future of grants,” said Gagnet.
“How do you pivot from this when you’re a creative? I think we’re all kind of scared.”
Gagnet, who has been painting murals and signs professionally for two decades, grew up in the business. Pacesetter Painting was started by her family 50 years ago, providing commercial painting services for anything from gymnasium floors to massive warehouses. Painting logos for the family business was Gagnet’s entry point, and how she honed the craft.
“One of my biggest privileges was being taught a trade. At 17, if I wanted something like new shoes, my dad would say, ‘caulk all these baseboards’. We wear ‘painter’s whites’, and my uncle said, ‘those whites make green.’”
Gagnet, 42, lives in Walnut Hills. She was named after her grandfather’s great-aunt, and comes from Dominican and French Creole roots.
Room to create
Gagnet studied fashion at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to New York where she worked as an artist assistant and on the exhibition construction crew at the Guggenheim Museum. While painting a mural abroad, she had the revelation to return to Dayton and take up the trade full time.
“If you’re going to be (in New York), you’re either young to do the starving (artist) thing, or you’re there because you’re doing something you can’t do anywhere else.
“We have room to create here. Physical and emotional room. So I moved back.”
In addition to our region, she has completed murals in Sicily, California, Houston, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Illinois.
Her local designs include the “On Peace Work” mural at Courthouse Square, and the 65-foot tall arch mural on the side of the Transportation Center. She painted all the murals at the Levitt Pavilion, the linear flowers on the Brightside, and the retro-toned waves outside Ghostlight Coffee. Signage on many local bars, restaurants, and salons shows off her talent.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Last year Gagnet produced the mural festival, WHOA Mural Project, which utilized both local artists and others from the region and abroad. She raised $45,000 to privately fund the project.
Her signature style, she says, is “crispy”.
“I like a crispy edge. I want it to look like somebody put a sticker up there. Graphic, geometric. I pay a lot of attention to color relationships. I want the colors to pop.”
Designing with integrity
The day starts around 6 a.m. with an hour of coffee in the sun. Instant coffee is the way to go, she says.
“You don’t even have to have your eyes open, and you have coffee in your mouth. I sit on the porch and wake up.”
She wears her painting overalls most often.
“I have all my painting clothes set aside. I think I get paid better when I wear my overalls. And they’re adorable.”
She does her design and clerical work from home in the morning.
“There’s usually some sort of concept or prompt that the client or grant folks are asking for. I try to find a balance between making people happy, not freaking them out with something wild, and getting to do my own work that I have integrity with. I want to make what I want to make, but at the same time, if you give me a design I will execute it.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“There an artist, Kate Shepherd, who I’ve worked with, and I’ve produced her work five times. She’s in Manhattan. I got to paint for Bloomberg and three of the galleries that represent her. She mixes the paint and we talk it all out.”
The wall
“I pack my lunch. I go to the commercial paint store, Sherwin-Williams, on Walnut by the Oregon District. They don’t mansplain me because they know me so well.”
Then it’s time for another coffee, at Ghostlight on Wayne Avenue.
“Then I get to the job and I stand for at least an hour and don’t work. I’m serious. I just stand there with my friend Maggie who helps me paint. We’re talking out the project and logistics and the plan. Then we work our asses off.
“When I go up really high, it takes me a minute to adjust sometimes, and then I’m fine. I was taught how to use a ladder well. My brother always said, you’re not gonna fall.”
Gagnet has a twin brother in town, James.
“He’s the one that helped me figure out how to do this. He’s my constant consultant.”
Physical graffiti
“Work days are anywhere from 6 to 10 hours. We’ve done 10 hour days straight for a week, which is insane. You can’t move at the end of the day.
“The longest project was 6 weeks, and that was White-Allen. Two 2,000 square foot murals. I gridded parts of it, and stenciled a lot. Sometimes I’ll hop around with colors, but in that case I did layer by layer. The tall part with the Chevy logos were ten stencils each. They were 4 by 10 foot stencils. It was massive.”
Gagnet gets through the day with “water, Liquid I.V., coffee, Red Bull, snacks, sunscreen and music.”
“If I’m by myself it’s headphones, otherwise it’s a speaker. Fela Kuti, Talking Heads, hip hop. You have to curate to your atmosphere. If I’m on a certain job and people are walking by, you’ve gotta play some jazz.
“People who live or work nearby get invested in watching the process. The piece means more to them then. It’s nice to be able to share it, because the process is really cool.”
The studio
Gagnet heads back to her studio to clean brushes and store paint.
Housed within the family headquarters near the Packard Museum is her lofted space built out by her father, who has also renovated 40-some properties in addition to running Pacesetter with James. She also uses the studio for personal projects.
“I make little paintings sometimes. I embroider a lot. I do intense amounts of French knots in geometric patterns. I sew. I’m making pants for my nephew out of my brother’s old ‘whites’.
“I do work for myself because it feels good.”
Art runs the world
After work she has dinner out with one of her parents. Back home, she sits on the porch or the couch and “stares at the wall”. Stretching and yoga help her body through the hard physical work of mural painting.
“It’s not just physical work, it’s mental,” she said.
The day wraps up at 10 or 11.
“Art runs the world. It’s at the center of capitalism, in the sense that it drives purchases. Think of graphic design, all design. When you have a mural on a building, people want to come to your business.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
The mural at the Transportation Center was the first large piece that Gagnet designed herself.
“I was awarded a grant by The Contemporary Dayton and the Downtown Dayton Partnership. I got to be up there, 60 feet in the air, in the evening when the sun is setting, by myself painting. It was beautiful and I couldn’t have felt luckier.
“I was very lucky to be taught a trade so that I could build my own business. Public art is so important.”
MORE DETAILS
Visit ataliegagnet.com for more about Atalie Gagnet.
The Eichelberger Concert Series at Levitt Pavilion, where Gagnet painted several murals, runs through Sept. 13. More info at levittdayton.org.
FIND THE ART
Find a map of local art on the Dayton Daily News website. https://tinyurl.com/3pkewesb
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