Magnolia and Everest Eickhoff clean-up graffiti at Province Park earlier this year. Submitted photos
Two Franklin teens helped make a local park look nicer by cleaning up graffiti this fall.
Magnolia and Everest Eickhoff and their family decided to clean up graffiti and re-paint a damaged part of a mural in Province Park. The clean-up started in October and finished in November.
Magnolia Eickhoff said she first saw the graffiti in August.
“It was just annoying,” she said. “Sometimes people just don’t get enough attention or don’t have the right outlets for their feelings, and so they do rude things like spray-painting a tag over an actual piece of art.”
Magnolia and Everest, along with their parents Matthew Eickhoff and Denise Charboneau-Eickhoff, brought soap, water and wire brushes to clean up the graffiti. They also fixed the paint on a mural with guidance from Matthew Eickhoff, who is an artist, Charboneau-Eickhoff said.
The Eickhoffs said they care about public art and wanted to do their part to help keep the park beautiful.
“Really the kids were looking for no recognition,” Charboneau-Eickhoff said. “They just wanted to make sure that the walk we enjoy was beautiful again.”
Franklin Parks and Recreation was unaware of the clean-up project, said Nathan Brown, park operations director. However, he said the clean-up was “greatly appreciated.” Erin Davis, the artist who originally painted the mural the family repaired, gave the group permission to re-paint the damaged portion of the mural.
Both of the Eickhoff teenagers had messages for those who choose to draw graffiti on public property.
“Just be a kind human. You’re not cool or funny or radical for painting a tag on somebody else’s art or a public resource,” Magnolia Eickhoff said. “It’s just annoying to the people who see it all the time and those who end up fixing it … The world needs art. Art is what makes change. Tags don’t.”
She encouraged people who want to publish their art to post it on the internet or get a mural approved for an empty space in the city.
Everest Eickhoff echoed similar thoughts on what he’d say to people who choose to draw graffiti on public property.
“I would say to just stop, nobody likes it and it isn’t cool to ruin someone else’s art by painting on murals. It creates an idea in the neighborhood that other people can do this and go unpunished and that isn’t a good message,” he said. “We need to protect communities from stuff like this so as to keep them healthy.”
As for the future, both Magnolia and Everest Eickhoff said that they would clean graffiti off of the murals again if it comes back. Magnolia Eickhoff said there are still some tags around the park on cinder blocks and telephone poles, which she encourages people in the community to clean up.
“Beautiful movements in small towns are much faster when the citizens stand up and do what matters,” she said.
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