4B — Thursday, March 19, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By RACHEL KERR
Daily Arts Writer
I walk down East Washington
Street toward a brick building
with blocks of bright colors
painted around its doorway. I
ring the bell and quickly come
face to face with a woman
wearing an easy smile. I reach
out my hand to greet her, but
I’m instead embraced by an
enthusiastic German Shepherd
(whose name I later learn is
Miss Lilian Moosecow, or just
“Moose”). No formalities here,
it seems.
The woman is Mary Thiefels,
founder of Tree Town Murals,
“a mural art company in public
art,
corporate
murals
and
private spaces,” she explained.
She’s worn many other hats,
though:
student
at
both
Pioneer and Community High
School, waitress at Jerusalem
Garden, bartender at Café Zola
and,
currently,
Visual
Arts
Coordinator at local nonprofit
the Neutral Zone, whose offices
I happen to be comfortably
seated in. When she speaks, it’s
with an obvious affection for
her art – specifically, murals –
and an intimate knowledge of
her hometown – Ann Arbor.
“For years, when I was in
high school, there was just a
bunch of miscellaneous tag art.
There was even profanities,”
she explained. “But otherwise,
there
was
nothing
really
inspiring happening.”
But,
of
course,
Thiefels
changed
all
that.
After
graduating high school, she
began taking advanced studio
art
classes,
studying
color
theory and life drawing with
renowned community artists
such as Fred Horowitz and
John Lockard. At the age of
19, she created her first mural
on Felch Street within a local
railroad underpass, a “bridge
between neighborhood and city
center,” she said. 19 was also
the age Thiefels and her friends
were arrested for malicious
destruction of property.
“We all tried to run, and then
we’re like, ‘Wait this is stupid.
We’re really not doing anything
wrong.’ Like, we really felt
like what we were doing was
morally correct,” Thiefels said.
And apparently, so did the
city – the charges were dropped
after
overwhelming
support
ARTIST
PROFILE
IN
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
Ah, 1950s suburbia. Green
grass, pink flamingos, perfect
pastel houses with perfect
pastel
hus-
bands
and
really
cool
shrubbery.
Those
were
the days — a
simpler time
of
domes-
tic bliss and
brushed-
under-the-
spotless-
kitchen-table
misogyny.
Add a little bit of leather
and some surprisingly femi-
nist undertones to the tra-
ditional ’50s aesthetic and,
hey, you’ve got yourself a hot
new music video from Megan
Trainor, queen of bass.
Bubblegum
doo-wop
accompanies an explosion of
colors when you hit play on
“Dear Future Husband” —
it’s exciting, visually enticing
and just really freaking cute.
Trainor “tests out” a variety
of studly fellas throughout the
three and a half minutes. “Hey
future husband,” she inquires
in her day dress, can you cook
a meal that covers more than
an inch of the plate? The first
suitor fails miserably, bring-
ing her a bleak, lone scallop
and one green bean. That
doesn’t contribute to the well-
being of bass. Out with him.
She won’t settle, and in
that light, the video’s kitschy,
retro persona becomes sugar-
coated satire. Gender roles
are challenged — ideas of ’50s
“womanhood,”
lusciously
lampooned. Outfit changes
(Trainor and her cat-eyed
eyeliner look better than ever)
and blue skies continue as
she sings, “You got that 9 to
5, but, baby, so do I, so don’t
be thinking I’ll be home and
baking apple pies.” Cue: an
apple pie engulfed in Hades’s
flames.
Got that, future husband?
Respect and equality is all it
takes. Oh, and a box of pizza
— the gent carrying a greasy
Italian pie wins out in the end.
It’s not delivery; it’s feminism.
-MELINA GLUSAC
EPIC RECORDS
VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily
Mary Thiefels is an Ann Arbor-based muralist.
TRAILER REVIEW
The
latest
trailer
for
“Insurgent,” the upcoming
sequel to last year’s “Diver-
gent,” doesn’t
show much to
get the view-
er excited for
the
movie.
Practically
every
line
of
dialogue
uttered sounds like some-
thing you’ve heard a million
times already, including lines
as unmemorable as “We have
to stop her … together,” “This
is the only chance to rescue
what little civilization we
have left” and “Dark times
call for extreme measures.”
Even the title of the trailer
is generic: “Stand Together.”
Themes of teamwork or sacri-
fice could theoretically make
the movie more than another
by-the-numbers
dystopian
trope-fest, but nothing in
the trailer suggests anything
thoughtful or new.
The trailer does promise
action for the movie, though
even that is uninventive and
tedious. In a convenient mon-
tage that doesn’t pause long
enough for you to realize how
uninteresting each individual
shot is, Tris (Shailene Wood-
ley, “The Fault in Our Stars”)
leaps through a glass wall, a
CGI building explodes, Four’s
(Theo James, “Bedlam”) face
disintegrates into little sil-
ver bubbles, a blue laser beam
ripples down a street and Tris
jumps off a building, soaring
through the air to catch the
end of a cable. None of this
looks real, and in many of
them, it’s clear that even in the
context of the movie, they’re
supposed to be simulations. An
action movie built on attrac-
tive action simulations could
be fun and cool-looking — after
all, any action movie is techni-
cally unreal — but there’s no
exciting choreography, little
genuine emotion and worst of
all, no apparent stakes. Unless
you count Ansel Elgort saying,
“You are living proof that the
Divergent problem has grown
beyond all control” as a signi-
fier of legitimate conflict.
-BENJAMIN ROSENSTOCK
SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT
D+
Insurgent
Summit
Entertainment
from the community and even
the Ann Arbor Railroad, who
later asked her to continue
creating
murals
for
their
underpasses. She was given
commissions by the Ann Arbor
City Council and approached
by private businesses including
the Arena Sports Bar and
Grill, which still bears an
early
Thiefels
mural.
“It’s
not on my website; it’s sort of
embarrassing,” she said. But it
was that positive community
response that inspired her to
take the next step.
“I was like, ‘I’m doing this.
This is way too much fun.’ I’m
painting. I’m designing. I’m
outside. People love it. Like,
what is not cool about this?”
she added. “So that’s when I
decided, Tree Town Murals,
that’s my company.”
After its birth in 2007, Tree
Towns quickly began to reach
other areas of Michigan such
as Hillsdale, Whitmore Lake
and Chelsea. Thiefels designed
murals centering around city
pride and town history, honing
her artistic skill and learning
how to better run her business
through
collaboration
with
historians
and
community
members on the projects.
“Any artist will get really
good at taking the ideas and
concepts from the people they’re
working with and collaborating
with but then also putting their
own unique twist on it,” Thiefels
said about her experience. “You
can kind of read a community,
whether
they’re
ready
for
something really contemporary
or if they really need something
that’s still a little dated and more
about the history.”
And, at its core, that’s what
Tree Town Murals is all about:
community involvement.
Whether it’s an open dialogue
about the piece or hands-on
involvement, Thiefels makes sure
everyone can contribute. To do
so, she, along with her business
partner and artistic collaborator,
Daniel
Matanic,
created
a
concept
called
“paint-by-
number.” With a paint brush in
hand and some instruction from
Tree Town volunteers, members
of the community with no artistic
experience have the opportunity
to be a part of something larger
than
themselves,
to
create
something for their city by filling
in designated parts of the mural.
“The community paint days
or participatory aspects have
resonance tenfold,” Thiefels said.
“Even spending ten minutes on
the wall, like filling in a little
area, that person takes pride
in the whole painting ... even if
they can’t see their brushstroke
perfectly,” she said.
Of the participants involved,
many are adolescents, an age
group Thiefels has a lot of
experience with. In the past, she’s
taught summer programs at the
Ann Arbor Art Center and adopted
teenage
apprentices
to
assist
with her projects, many of whom
she now calls good friends with
amazing art careers.
In 2013, she began working at
the Neutral Zone, where student
artwork decorates the classroom
we’re seated in. Moose lays quietly
in his dog bed, a Verner Panton
heart-cone chair sits near us. “We
found it on the street, but we don’t
know if it’s an exact original,” she
said. The place oozes with warmth
and welcoming, as it should. The
nonprofit prides itself on being
a youth-driven space, one that
fosters creativity and growth
and offers a unique partnership
between adults and those youths.
In fact, 50 percent of the Neutral
Zone’s Board of Directors are
youths.
“We
run
visual
arts
programming,
music
programming,
literary
arts
programming. We have leadership
and education, which are more
of our youth empowerment and
activism groups. They’re kind of
after school activities,” Thiefels
said. “A lot of our teens that have
gone through two to four years
of Neutral Zone activities are
now equipped with these ‘21st
century skills’ of collaborating
and knowing how to represent
themselves and their ideas.”
A cohesiveness between the two
organizations naturally appeared
soon after Thiefels took the job.
From then on, she successfully
integrated Tree Towns’s public
mural aspect into the Neutral
Zone’s youth-oriented programs,
giving adolescents the opportunity
to use mural art as an expressive
outlet — something Thiefels views
as essential to daily life.
“(Public pieces) inspire people
to look at the world differently and
think about themselves differently.
To promote and sponsor the
arts is a viable way for healing
our city centers, our economies,
and ourselves,” Thiefels said. “I
want to be a part of that trend,
where public murals are a form
of activism or a form of changing
minds, a form of changing lives.”
One day, Thiefels hopes to
impact cities beyond Michigan,
to
illustrate
the
voices
and
imaginations
of
communities
outside the United States, to
add color to the lives of unique
individuals all over the world.
“This,” she said, “is just the
beginning.”
A
Dear
Future
Husband
Meghan
Trainor
Epic Records
THE D’ART BOARD
Each week we take shots at the biggest
developments in the entertainment world.
Here’s what hit (and missed) this week.
Design by Gaby Vasquez
Foxxy Lady
Jamie Foxx and Katie
Holmes hold hands,
maybe gave each other
cookies.
Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
Lena Dunham to wed
Jack Antonoff.
“On second thought ... no cream.”
Starbucks encourages baristas
to talk with customers about
race.
The Plebeian Tenenbaums
Gwyneth Paltrow says she is very
close to the “common woman.”
Sounds like a job for Paul
Blart: Mall Mountie
Motorcyclist leads police on
chase through Calgary,
Canada mall.
“I’m painting.
I’m designing.
I’m outside.
People love it.”