All art tells a story. Public art tells it outside. Public mural art makes a particularly bold statement and carries the power to unify a community. The artists behind these works are like ambassadors with a brush—or a spray can.
“I moved to Boston in the late ’90s to go to Mass College of Art for illustration. I started befriending kids who were into graffiti. It became my vehicle for creativity for the next four years, probably more so than art school did,” shares Dana Woulfe, co-founder of Studio Fresh, a creative services studio specializing in hand-painted murals, graphics and signage based in Essex. “[There] was something about the immediacy and the energy I got from graffiti that compelled me to spend way too much time on it. I learned a ton in terms of creating attentive, attention-grabbling pieces and how to use color and composition. And, obviously, a lot of letter work.
“Art school was great. It taught me the rules and the foundation. Graffiti motivated me to take it somewhere else. It lit the fire under me.”
After graduation, Woulfe and fellow “graffiti kids” from other art schools continued making murals which evolved into an art collective called Project SF. “It was like Super Friends—we all had a talent that we combined to form a larger entity. Some of us were designers, some painters, some were computer animation. We all got into street art. We also got together to throw these warehouse parties with DJs and we painted the walls.”
Those events led these super friends to be hired by gyms, snowboarding events and Nike. This was the beginning of Studio Fresh. (Woulfe and co-founder Josh Falk kept the initials.) Woulfe also entered the corporate world, enjoying a long career with Converse. After he became a father, life changed. He loved being a dad and an artist yet wanted a more autonomous and expansive life. Within a few months of leaving Converse, Woulfe and Falk were booking jobs as Studio Fresh, which was then based in South Boston. Over the span of ten years, Studio Fresh grew from “very raw, creative projects…into large-scale commercial work where we’re working with art departments, artists and designers to help realize their vision.”
Woulfe’s transition to Cape Ann was the realization of another vision. “I had never heard of Essex or Cape Ann,” Woulfe laughs. “I’d been to the beaches yet I didn’t really identify this as a place I wanted to be. I just knew I wanted the north shore. Cape Ann is such a magical place and we’re so lucky we ended up here. We found the perfect property in Essex.” Then Woulfe discovered the Essex River: “Oh my God, this is where I live?,” he remembers thinking. “This is our communal resource? I can’t believe this is real life.”
Woulfe manages Studio Fresh after Falk’s departure a few years ago to pursue his own work. “I hire friends and artists as needed.…We have a wide variety of jobs from commercial stuff (where we really get to paint as painters) to signage.” Through a partnership with the Gloucester chapter of The Awesome Foundation, Studio Fresh has created many striking murals across New England and Cape Ann, including an extraordinary rendering of Winslow Homer’s The Flirt; The Doryman’s Mural in commemoration of Gloucester’s fishing industry; and the mural found on the front of the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce honoring many trades across the region.
How has Cape Ann influenced Woulfe’s personal art practice? “As an artist, it was a pivot, a point of growth for me. My aesthetic as a personal artist was rooted in urban art, graffiti, this aggressive kind of mark making. Very energetic stuff, very youthful and urban. Here I found my inspiration changing.…I’m a dad doing different things in my life and I’ve been drawn more to landscapes and being outside and on the water.”
And Woulfe discovered what all artists do when they arrive on Cape Ann—that mercurial light. “The light is the number one thing. I’ve spent a lot of time fishing on my boat, seeing sunrises and sunsets, and there’s just nothing like it. I call it my ‘church.’ I’m not really a religious person but those mornings on the water give me a calm sanity that I can’t find anywhere else. It’s like I’m in meditation and the inspiration that comes from the visuals of the light and the landscapes is just unparalleled.”
“My personal practice has suffered,” Woulfe admits. “It’s hard to paint murals all day long and come home to start a new canvas. That being said, I’ve got a series of landscapes, sunrises and sunsets on the water. In some I’m taking a more abstract approach to fuse my old language with my new language.…I haven’t figured out if I want my landscapes to be literal landscapes where I capture the light well or if I want to infuse some of this urban language. I’m still figuring this out.…I’m excited to see where this goes.”
