You may have noticed Louisville’s city walls look a bit different after the 2BUCK Invitational earlier in September. It’s a mural and graffiti festival that brings artists together from here in the city, across the country, and even internationally. It’s become an annual tradition, transforming neighborhoods with color and conversation around public art.
I spoke with organizer Henry Cunningham about the festival’s mission, its impact on the community, and what’s next.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Ayisha Jaffer: Henry, for people who may not know, what is the 2BUCK Invitational and how did it get started?
Henry Cunningham: I guess I want to start by just saying the 2BUCK Invitational is a huge group effort. I'm one of an eight-nine person team that organizes and puts this on every year. But in addition to that, we have multiple property owners that provide space that help make it possible. And we have multiple businesses that help support our cause as well.
The jam itself started over 10 years ago. Since then, we've been able to grow the jam. Now we're really proud of where we're at. Just this past year, we provided space for over 170 artists. We hosted artists from over 35 states, and really feel like we've made a huge contribution to the city and the neighborhoods that we live in.
AJ: I love that, and I've noticed it myself in my own neighborhood. How do you decide which walls or spaces you're going to include?
HC: There's multiple factors that come into play because we want to provide space. Not just to top premier artists, but we want to be a very inclusive event, meaning that we want to be able to have space that is for people that are just getting started, novice artists, and artists that are very well established and do this for a profession.
So we're looking for a wide variety of different types of walls and locations. We also target locations that maybe could use a facelift. Could use some kind of maintenance, upkeep. There's a lot of work that we do before the actual artists show up, to get the walls prepped. So we scrape walls, we paint walls, we prep walls so that they're a good canvas for the artist. But you know, the other amazing thing about that is that it's improving the building structure itself.
AJ: So I want to talk about All-City. What is all city and how does it fit into the work you're doing?
HC: All-City is our nonprofit, and as a nonprofit, we have two main goals. We have two main objectives. The first objective is to serve the art culture. The public art culture. Serve graffiti writers, street artists. We do that by providing walls for artists to come paint, providing paint for them to use, hopefully providing them housing and food, so that they can be here comfortably while they paint.
Anytime that you bring all of these people together, it's an opportunity for people to talk to one another, celebrate accomplishment. Network. For me personally, I get really excited when I see a young artist being able to to meet someone like Wane [One] COD, who was here this past year, who has been a top figure in the graffiti culture since the late ‘80s. Those young people get to meet that guy and see that guy paint, and that's a huge inspiration, I think, for everyone involved.
The other part is that we want to serve the community that we live in. So we're here to provide public art for the people that live in these neighborhoods. You said it yourself. You live there, so you've noticed it: the impact that that brings, the joy that it brings, the pride that it brings into a neighborhood. It disrupts the mundane and it inspires people and gives people, hopefully, an opportunity to see the world slightly different.
