Got $$ ? Want to help your community through art? We have a cause!
Hello, this is The Hive SLC, your local tattoo shop. We are commissioning a mural to help visualize the difficulties of moving into the unknown and the risks that you can’t imagine that lay ahead. It's a scary day when you decide to take that step for yourself, but we understand that there are many reasons why people are tempted to make a large change. Family, faith, friendships, and finances are always on the chopping block when deciding to take that first step. This mural is about the difficulties of leaving what you have grown up with and walking out into the unknown.
We’ve decided to hire the artist Miles Toland (IG: https://www.instagram.com/milestoland/ ). We met Miles through the mural fest in Salt Lake City, and believe Miles has a certain aesthetic to his work that embodies a spirituality to help deliver such a profound message of faith in oneself. His creative juices have been squeezed from the fruits of graffiti culture, a BFA at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, live painting at festivals, and traveling around the world creating street art in places including Paris, Switzerland, Art Basel Miami, Mexico, Canada, and India. His mural series at the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh has been published in the Smithsonian Magazine and The New York Times blog.
If you are asking: “why would a tattoo shop want to do a mural for the city?” Well, you don’t know much about The Hive SLC. The Hive SLC was started in 2019 by a Florida transplant artist Mason Atlas who came to love this community. When he started working in Salt Lake City, he learned that there were artists who didn’t know where to find support to live out their dreams of becoming working creative professionals. He took action and started several personally funded programs to bring the arts to the locals such as classes designed to bridge the gap between university graduates and finding creative careers. He continues to innovate and support the arts and this mural will just be another iteration of his desire to improve his community through the arts.
It took several years to get this project off the ground: timing, budget, and design were all carefully picked and planned but we are finally here, and this project will be taking place in September 2023. We will have several ways for you to help:
The above GoFundMe page, which will pay for expenses. These donations help fund the mural itself.
We will have several of Miles’ prints available at the tattoo shop for purchase. Sales from these prints will help fund Miles as an artist, and allow him to invest an extra day spent giving an in-depth talk about the life of a traveling international muralist and how he finds balance in it all.
Any The Hive SLC gift card purchased from now until November 1st we will donate 20% of the amount towards the project.
Three big ways to help bring some incredible art to your community, in the name of helping other artists feel less alone.