Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

Turning to look right (after espying the scene below) one sees this old ‘ghost sign.’ Which, given its locale in a little-trafficked back-alley off Lee Street, is little seen indeed these days. Do any viewers recall Carol’s Drive-In & dry cleaning services in Charleston? Or Carol? Did she offer dry cleaning pick up? Or hamburgers AND dry cleaning?

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

Yes, Walker has been skulking in alleys and back business stoops again. This still life in off-white and red can be found along Lee Street, beside the late, lamented City National Bank branch building, filled with nice ladies who would serve out fresh popcorn from a side table machine and creme soda suckers, along with your withdrawals.

Guest photo by Amy Williams

Here’s the latest in the (literally) hot work going on at the corner of Elizabeth and Washington Street East. (See the posts below for background on the project.) Mural artist Rob Cleland is making some progress, but I doubt he’ll make the end of week deadline he set for himself this past weekend! Stop by and give Rob some support (or water).

— By Mark Wolfe

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Mark Wolfe

Guest photoblogger Mark Wolfe offers the first of a series of photos documenting a new 20-by-30-foor East End mural that is a community development project of the East End Main Street Program’s Design Committee. Rob Cleland, an artist with a studio above the Bluegrass Kitchen, is painting the mural on the side of the building at the corner of Elizabeth and Washington streets, across from the New China restaurant.

A $6,000 grant (raised through the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, the Governor’s Community Partnership Grant, the Charleston Area Alliance and private donations) calls for the mural to be done by the end of July. Which is why Cleland can be found up on mini-crane most days until 3 p.m., when he’s got some kid duties, and then back there after dinner by about 6 p.m

~ thegazz.com editor

Photo for thegazz.com by Mark Wolfe

The mural will feature colorful East End scenes of children playing, couples walking and other folk in daily activities. Youth from Sojourners Homeless Shelter, Piedmont Elementary and Roosevelt Community Center sketched mural ideas during the recent Festivall Charleston and Cleland says there’ll be a couple images of kids drawing their designs. “It think its gonna be cool,” he says.

~ thegazz.com editor

Photo for thegazz.com by Mark Wolfe. Click to enlarge

Posters, t-shirts and other items featuring the Eeast End mural image will be sold for a mural maintenance fund and as seed money for other East End public art installations. First, of course, artist Rob Cleland has to get the thing done…

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

View Number 2 of the vast wasteland in front of the Clay Center. Normally, I am all for dramatic presentation and open plazas. But the Clay Center has never quite become the community locus that it could be (much less, being seen as an inviting place to those who yet believe it is beyond the reach of their pocketbooks and wallets). It would greatly help to re-conceive the entire front of the place as described below. To drive by and see a host of cars parked in front, with stands and kiosks selling lunch foods and drinks and people sitting and strolling around would go a long way toward making the center seem more inviting, more busy, more welcoming.

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

There was a Vent Line complaint recently in the Charleston Gazette about the barren approach to the front of the Clay Center. That is only part of the problem. With a new admninistrator now in charge at the center, one wishes the facility would rethink the failed front yard of this structure. One cannot help but wonder if the vast driveway turnaround that fronts the center reflects the fact the place was conceived, funded and designed either by bluebloods or with bluebloods in mind — makes a convenient drop off point right to the front door so as not to have to walk so far in heels and a spangly dress. (True, it makes it easier for school buses to disgorge school children, as well.) But that’s not the essential problem. The whole front should be redesigned, with drive-up parking replacing the turnaround so that the center always seems a hive of activity. A kiosk selling cappuccino out front? Re-think the side and back plaza as an inviting place to eat lunch during the workday?

Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille. Click to enlarge

To be sure, the Clay Center has some lovely gardens, a veritable Horn of Almathea of flowers and a few nice sculptures. But the problem being….

Click to enlarge. Photo for thegazz.com by Walker DeVille

The problem being that the Clay Center’s lovely back sculpture garden is fenced in and — to the public, at least — apparently inaccessible. Now, maybe from inside the center it is possible to enter this lovely bower (though there seems no indication from inside that one is welcome). But if not, why not — or, if so, why is the welcome not made more clear? I understand it is not a public park, but why not directly invite Clay Center ticketholders into this space for peaceful lunches and some rapprochement with lillies of the valley?