Godzilla mural by Minneapolis kids covers up bad graffiti

By Jen Boyles Thu., Sep. 22 2011 at 7:06 AM

Categories: Art

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Photo by Laura Fyfe

Godzilla vomits flowers in Powderhorn

You've heard the saying. When life gives you lemons, you say to heck with those lemons and let local middle-school kids handle your persistent neighborhood graffiti problem. At least, that's pretty much what happened when less-than-artful tags started showing up on Laura Fyfe's garage in Powderhorn last fall.

"Even in the dead of winter, we would come out in the morning to a new scribble on a new wall," she says.

After months of putting up with the problem and unsure where to turn, Fyfe came home one day to a letter in her mailbox from the middle-school students at the Pillsbury House at 35th and Chicago. It read: "We want to paint a mural on your garage! We've noticed all the graffiti and want to help make our neighborhood cleaner!"

If this wasn't the perfect fix, Fyfe didn't know what was.

Oddly enough, before receiving the children's letter, Fyfe and her husband had met with a professional artist to look into ways to cover up the ugly graffiti, but the high cost kept them from going that route. The offer from these young school-age artists was a godsend.

Before: Ugly graffiti

But how do you go from sparse, scrawly nonsense to a big, beautiful monster blazing flowers out of its mouth? One idea that the couple had talked about with the professional artist was "Godzilla climbing over the Minneapolis skyline, drinking a Premium." While this is an admittedly awesome idea, due to its somewhat PG-13 nature they didn't bring it up with the kids when they came over for their first brainstorming session. Instead, the students sketched away, and the ideas started coming together.

"One girl drew beach scene. Another girl had a peace theme complete with doves. One of the boys was nervous to show his picture, but when he finally did, it was a picture of Godzilla fighting another dinosaur," Fyfe says. She knew immediately that the concept was meant to be.

She asked the kids to combine all of their ideas, resulting in the following sketch:

Photo by Laura Fyfe

During: A plan in action by Powderhorn Middle School kids

The sketch soon came to life on the garage. All summer long this year, the Fyfes enjoyed their beastly mural, and Laura says they have no problems to report: "Not only have the kids stopped tagging our garage, but they have left our whole alley alone. That was one of the main goals behind the mural -- to put something up that even a kid wouldn't want to deface."