#billboardproject

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Fargo Billboard Project featuring McCal Joy

Misfit has taken over a prominent billboard in Downtown Fargo and made it a giant, public exhibition of local art. This recent display of urban expression is a part of our misfitty agenda to infuse delight and wonder where people have been conditioned to expect advertisements and marketing.

In August, we caught up with Fargo-based painter McCal Joy to talk about a series of paintings inspired by well-known folklore. After seeing her work, we encouraged her to submit to the call we put out to Fargo’s artistic community, asking for submissions of original artwork. We would pick one submission every quarter to be displayed on one of the largest canvases in town.

Although we received a number of excellent submissions, McCal’s art was picked by the Misfit judges and, just a few months later, McCal’s whimsical interpretation of Fargo is catching the eye of anyone walking along the Broadway strip.

“It’s kind of unreal having one of your pieces on a billboard,” McCal said.

She shared that people in town are picking out the things they recognize in the piece, depending on what they are interested in within the community:

There are visual shoutouts to local band D Mills & The Thrills playing high up on a tree branch and the weekly entrepreneurial gathering One Million Cups, represented by a mound of coffee mugs. A hospitable venture created to make out-of-towners feel more at home called Dinnerties is depicted by a dress tie etched onto a sign planted at the base of the great big tree; and the “garden of opportunity,” stretching out onto the green plains, speaks to the fact that Fargo has become a fertile hotbed for innovative companies and startups to plant roots and grow.

There’s a wonderful cacophony of miniaturized worlds to get lost in, but we asked McCal what the piece represented as a whole:

“The billboard illustration is a representation of how I see Fargo’s growing downtown community and was inspired by memories of my childhood fort-building,” McCal said.

Following in the footsteps of Michelangelo and Caravaggio, McCal painted a hidden portrait of herself into the picture. She can be identified at the very top of the tree framed within a window, working on her latest artistic inspiration. This depiction is entirely based on her reality, as her studio is perched on the third floor of a building on Broadway and has a window looking down on the hustle and bustle below.

One of the aspects of the painting that isn’t immediately understood is the “rollercoaster bird” about to launch itself off the tree branch with a group of passengers bracing themselves for uncertainty on its back.

“That was more for fun,” McCal grins, “being here in Fargo is a ride, you never know what to expect.”

For the foreseeable future, Misfit will continue to provide Fargo’s creatives with the opportunity to make the billboard their personal canvas. If you have an artistic rendering of how Fargo truly is a town for Misfits, then consider submitting your ideas here.

~ Dane Johnson, Misfit Wordsmith