Art group leaves their mark downtown

LYNN – The Good 2 Go crew from Raw Art Works is back at it, painting electrical boxes and bringing a little more outside art to the city’s Art and Cultural District.”It’s really remarkable,” said RAW Art Therapist Bruce Orr, who mentors the group. “All the ideas, the concepts come from them.”Good 2 Go is a group of young male artists who aim to have their work noticed in a positive way.”I offer guidance in respect as an artist and educator, they come up with the ideas,” Orr said. “I encourage them to think outside the box.”Good 2 Go is spending the next few weeks completing murals on electrical boxes on Willow and Munroe streets. On a recent breezy Thursday afternoon a half dozen artists painted white scalloped edging in a criss-cross pattern on the box across the street from the Post Office.”I started looking at stamps online,” said Erastus Thuo, 18, who designed the Willow Street mural. “Bruce gave me one idea to make it patriotic but in my own way.”Orr said Thuo took the patriotic idea and turned it on its head.The Munroe Street box will have more of an abstract design that Raymond Carlea, 16, the group’s newest member, plans to create to represent the city’s multiracial makeup.The project, a partnership between the city, RAW, Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, and Inspectional Services, got started two years ago when Good 2 Go painted eight electrical boxes over one summer. According to Ward 5 Councilor Brendan Crighton it is also part of a larger concept of expanding the amount of public art not only in the downtown area but in the city overall.For the young men of Good 2 Go, however, it’s all about the art. This latest project brings the number of electrical boxes painted by the young artists to 10 and remarkably none of the small scale murals have been marred by graffiti. Deondre Rivera, 16, said that doesn’t surprise him.”They’re going to respect the art …taggers wouldn’t hit it because it’s art,” he said.For Orr the project goes a little deeper than just a painted surface. Orr said the young men are also learning marketable skills such as composition and drawing, and to work as a team, which doesn’t always come naturally for artists. Being an artist can mean a lot of time in a studio alone, he said. Working as part of the Good 2 Go crew forces the guys to work together and be respectful of everyone’s ideas.Crighton said each artist came up with an idea for the utility boxes and the guys decided together which would be most appropriate. They then put the idea into a proposal that Orr said they then presented to the client, which in this case was Crighton.”What’s really cool is that these guys have really left their mark on a lot of places,” Orr said. “They did a mural this summer at the Olympia Center and they’ve done the other utility boxes.””It’s about pride in the city and their willingness to step up and do this,” Crighton added.