Cans of paint waited by a gray brick wall, which was covered in messy black lines. The artist was above, on a ladder, sketching what would become an homage to Norfolk history and Filipino heritage, linked by a crimson line. A passerby beckoned to the artist, wanting to know more.
Muralist Venazir Martinez started her “red thread movement” in the Philippines; in every mural she paints, she includes her signature scarlet string, connecting each piece to her previous works. The thread has snaked around the world before arriving in Norfolk, on a wall near Old Dominion University’s Chartway Arena.
The project is funded by an endowment established by the Filipino American community 27 years ago. FilAm programming returns after a decades-long pause to support ODU's mission to strengthen the community. This mural will be completed before Martinez’s public lecture on Thursday at noon at Baron & Ellin Gordon Art Galleries.
People often stop Martinez when she works and it creates a connection and intimacy that she values as a muralist.
“You're not on a stage, you're in the streets … You're accessible just like the art is accessible.”
Raised in Luzon, Philippines, Martinez spent her childhood drawing on the walls of her family’s rural home. As a young student, she was often involved with making editorial cartoons and posters for social causes.
“I always knew I had a knack for drawing,” she said. But “I grew up in a place where there's not enough art or art itself is an alienating concept. And there's no public art, no murals, nothing.”
But the first time she went to the capital, Manila, she discovered a mural by international artist Herakut that inspired her to pursue art professionally.
“That was the first time that I really was struck by such immense and beautiful art.”
She began painting a red thread in her work while at university to represent the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The thread visibly connects people. She started in her neighborhood, graffitiing a centipede-like pattern inspired by Batok, traditional hand-tapped tattoos.
“It has this structure of crawling, like it has movement,” she said. “It started crawling and that's when people started noticing it.”
People started looking for her work on the streets, following the thread down alleyways. The centipede morphed into a red string, symbolic of traditional Filipino weaving threads. And the thread has since appeared across the U.S., including earlier this year at Portsmouth’s Wall Street Mural Festival, where Martinez wove it into the city's history.
She said part of the value of her art is bringing a slice of another world to each mural— a “window” to other cultures and communities.
Her ODU mural incorporates aspects of Norfolk’s history, including the USS Wisconsin, and depictions of early Filipino immigrants, who arrived in modern-day California in October 1587.
A huge part of her work “is to know the stories of the people who live in the space … they define my work.”
She will discuss the Norfolk mural and her community-based creative process during her lecture.
“It's really important for people to know the journey because it adds so much depth,” she said.
“I believe that is the art itself.”
Martinez will work on the mural on 45th Street next to the University Village bookstore, leading up to her lecture on Thursday.