Street art smackdown.

Remember the The 337 Project? Well that event has turned into an ongoing artistic entity and this weekend it continued its dedication to street artists with an event called Face Off. The idea: take nine artists, give them 18 hours to paint a garage door at the Urban Gallery, and award the audience favorite with $1,000. It all took place last Friday and Saturday. I stopped by for a few minutes Saturday afternoon to check out the results.

I like street art, but only if its really good. And very little of it is really good. As street artists continue to seek more respect for their right to decorate our cities, they often do themselves a disservice by celebrating work that is just bad graffiti. And some of the work at Face Off was just bad graffiti. But there was some respectable work that shows just how much you can accomplish with a can of spray paint. My favorite was this image created by Chuck Landvatter.


The Urban Gallery is located at Neighborhood House, a non-profit that provides affordable day care. And for my money, the art surprise at Face Off was the kid-friendly mosaic at the entrance to the Neighborhood House.


You can still see it all at the Neighborhood House located at 1050 West 500 South.