Ali Aschman’s mural at the entrance to Brooklyn Fire Proof East. — Photo by Aaron Short
Every day, people passing through the alley into the bar Brooklyn Fire Proof East glance at a mural of nine sullen-looking gray-aquamarine figures standing over a field of dilapidated houses, smoldering under streaks of scarlet flames.
The 20x17ft mural at the corner of Ingraham and Porter Streets is the latest work from Bushwick-based South African artist Ali Aschman. Commissioned by Fire Proof owner Thomas "Burr" Dodd, Aschman’s untitled mural has a comforting, even calming appeal, despite the image of sorrow and destruction. The figures are hunched over, gazing downward at the flames, like the 21st century well-dressed progeny of Quasimodo.
When Aschman was painting the mural, curious onlookers often approached her and asked what it was. Was it a metaphor for the crash in the housing market? An allusion to the neighborhood’s history of arson? Hurricane Katrina?
"For me it is not a specific place. None of anything I paint or draw is in a specific place or has a specific meaning or identity," said Aschman. "Most people who walk by want you to give a meaning and get upset when you don’t give them one. They sometimes react like I’m cheating them out of something. I just make pictures. I don’t really think about them."
Originally trained as a printmaker at the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town, Aschman has tackled other media, including sculptures, installations, and this year, murals. Since coming to New York two years ago, she has participated in several exhibitions including a two person show at Parlour in Brooklyn, a group show in MTS Gallery in Anchorage, AK, and a summer arts festival called The Wassaic Project, in Wassaic, NY, where Aschman contributed a colorful installation featuring a plywood Minotaur that occupied a livestock stall in a former barn.
In May, the North Brooklyn Public Arts Coalition accepted her submission for the India Street Mural Project, where she painted a haunting aquamarine seascape with three human figures bent in arch-like positions on a boat sailing down what appears to be the river Styx.
The wall holding the India Street mural may soon be destroyed. Aschman holds no illusions that her works, including the Brooklyn Fire Proof one, will stay up for years on end.
"That’s the nature of murals. They break down and get painted over. Most murals aren’t meant to be permanent. I would someday love to make something that lasts forever but it’s really expensive to get those kinds of materials. These days artists are less concerned with making things last forever. The documentation is important and we have the means to document things," said Aschman.
For the Fire Proof mural, she used a similar but less saturated color scheme, adding red flames above the houses. The figures in both murals are similarly hunched over.
"I started drawing bendy, droopy people in about my third year of college," said Aschman. "It was a style that stuck with me and I have tried to make it my own. I often draw people that are melancholy."
The houses in her mural are plain, storybook houses, not at all like the Victorian houses Aschman grew up around. They are more like icons of houses, like a box of Monopoly pieces, except askew and shuffled as if at the bottom of a pile. Aschman says she does not look at images of real homes, preferring to keep the designs simple, with the effect of removing any context and making the mood more fanciful and melancholic.
She begins with a sketch, then draws a grid on the wall, which she then primes with two coats. Then she draws images of silhouettes and figures in chalk and goes over the lines with pant. Finally she paints the rest of the mural in, mixing colors as she proceeds.
"Because of the themes in Ali’s work, and formal choices in the mural, you have to look at it twice," said Andrzej Nowicki, Aschman’s studiomate. "The first time you see it, it almost blends in with the building and the neighborhood, but the second time you look at it you realize straight away that it’s something that’s been put there, it’s new. She has this way of not trying to force things in art, but there’s always a touch or certain message in pictures that comes from a very natural, personal place."
This month, Aschman is preparing several pieces for an auction at Cinders Gallery in Williamsburg and will be exhibiting her Minotaur installation in a window display for Desert Island Comics. More projects and exhibitions are being planned for the new year. For now, the fireproof mural remains a beacon, continuing to transfix onlookers, as a symbol of creativity emerging from the urban decay that once surrounded it, much like the Brooklyn Fire Proof complex itself.
