exterior · 2015
Godlike
The challenge
Stone Unlimited's wall on 3000 South in Salt Lake City was being tagged repeatedly. Rather than repaint it again, the business hired a former graffiti artist to cover the whole 100 feet. The brief came from what the company actually sold, imported Greek statuary, and the wall had to be finished in short sessions across three weeks, outdoors, with no stencils and no tape.
The wall runs the length of the building and reads left to right as three gods and one eye: Neptune raising a trident out of the water, Zeus in blue and purple smoke, Hades in fire, and an eye with the universe inside it. Fox 13 reported the piece in October 2015; TwistedSifter published it the same month.
It was painted freehand. In Shae’s words to Fox 13 at the time: “No tricks, no stencils, no tape, nothing.” He also told the station, of the scale, “As far as solo projects go, this is, by far, my largest one.”
The commission started as a graffiti problem. Stone Unlimited’s general manager, Bruce Merrill, told Fox 13 the reasoning he had been given: “He said there’s a lot of respect in between the artist community that once something is painted on a wall, they won’t tag it.”
The wall traveled further than the block it sits on. Fox 13 reported, in the same October 2015 story, that a photograph of it was trending on Reddit with more than five million views, and SRIL ART has listed it as a Reddit global number one ever since.
