Prominent Tacoma underpass a haven for taggers. City hopes $40K mural changes that
Nofo Porter went looking for stories of personal triumph and heroism.
Turns out, she has one of her own.
Porter, 33, is a Tacoma-based muralist. In many ways, she has the city to thank for her artistic calling, she recently told me.
Porter arrived in the City of Destiny as a young adult and struggled to find footing, she explained. Eventually, she landed at the Fab-5 Fabitat creative lab on Hilltop, where her knack for drawing was fostered by local mentors at the nonprofit community center who taught her the ins and outs of big-time mural work.
Porter flourished. To date, she has completed more than a dozen public pieces of art across the area.
A few years back, Porter almost lost it all.
Drinking went from a way to unwind to a daily necessity. When friends expressed concern, she clung to denial. It wasn’t until her art began to suffer that Porter saw the light and began to fight her way out.
Porter’s latest commissioned mural soon will light up the underpass at South Tacoma Way and Union Avenue. It’s her largest project to date.
As Porter began to sketch out a vision for what to paint — in a hard-scrabble, often-ignored part of the city, on the walls of a dark underpass where people sometimes go to survive — she thought about the battles we all wage, she said.
Porter thought about her search for redemption — and the personal Hero’s Journey it required.
Then she used it as inspiration.
In recent months, Porter has handed out flyers, sent emails and met locals for coffee, intent on finding and capturing the neighborhood’s stories of struggle and perseverance.
When we spoke by phone, she said she has conducted more than a dozen interviews with people who live or work near South Tacoma Way and Union Avenue.
“My life crashed and burned. I thought I was going to get fired and lose my house and lose my dogs. But instead of that happening, my boss at the time helped me get to a place where I could get help,” Porter recalled of her struggle with addiction.
“Outreach and talking to people help me create something I can be proud of,” she said of her work.
“I like to make murals that are connected to the surrounding community.”
Frequent target of illegal tagging
Porter’s connection to the South Tacoma Way and Union Avenue underpass dates back to February when she was selected by a panel that included a member of the Tacoma Arts Commission from a field of 11 applicants, according to Tacoma Public Art program manager Rebecca Solverson.
Solverson told The News Tribune that Porter’s mural work is budgeted for $40,000, in partnership with the city’s public works department.
It’s designed to serve several purposes, Solverson said.
Tacoma’s public works street operations team has identified the underpass as a frequent target of illegal tagging, Solverson indicated. Along with beautifying the area and adding to its character, the city hopes the new mural will serve as a deterrent to graffiti and cut down on cleanup costs.
The mural also supports the city’s official South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan, Solverson said.
“The City spends a tremendous amount of time and money cleaning up illegal tagging, and murals can be an effective way to reduce this, so our crews can focus on other things,” she explained.
Tacoma Public Art Project Manager Rick Reyes said Porter is perfect for the project.
“Nofo was selected based on her ability to connect community vision, engagement and stories to meaningful public artworks. She is a local who really understands the importance of holding and representing diverse stories respectfully, and the panel resonated with that during the selection process,” Reyes added.
“She is also someone who hasn’t created an artwork of this scale, so we were really excited to see what she could do given the budget, time and space to really create something amazing.”
Porter feels similar excitement and the pressure that comes with it, she said.
As often happens, the project has evolved. Initially, Porter hoped to focus on themes related to “drugs, alcohol and everything in that family of struggle,” she said. But the stories she has gathered are human and complex, encompassing everything from the neighborhood’s history and a time before the freeway arrived to what it’s like to wait tables at Marcia’s Silver Spoon Cafe just down the street.
Porter is determined to let what she hears guide her work, she said.
She plans to start laying down paint in July and finish her mural by the end of September.
Porter hopes what she creates will feel like a reflection of the neighborhood, she said, inspiring people to “welcome others into their lives and into their conversations.”
“I’m going to take just a little bit from each conversation, and a little bit from each person’s life,” Porter explained of her plans for the mural.
“I want a full range of life, including some of the darker elements … and a brighter side to look toward.”
This story was originally published June 7, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
