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Franklin Square

North Bruce Street

March 14, 2013

25. Nether World

Stepping from his “wheat paste mobile,” a battered, pale blue compact, street artist known as Nether unfurls his latest work. It’s a 7-foot-by-5-foot black and white drawing of a fictional character he’s created—the dark, unseen city employee who secretly nails the (real) ubiquitous red “X” marks on Baltimore’s vacant rowhomes and buildings deemed unsafe for firefighters.

Nearly every house on both sides of this West Baltimore block has a red “X” on its boarded windows.

Sometimes the 23-year-old travels by bicycle, with a basket attachment holding his bucket of homemade paste in place—while he straddles his 16-foot pole and brush—riding, he jokes, “like Harry Potter.” Today, he drove because he needs his collapsible ladder.

Meanwhile, a girl, maybe 10, in a pink sweater, large black-rimmed glasses, and a big Afro, peers from a door in one of the few inhabited homes behind him. A couple of dolls, a ball, and several plastic cars sit on her front stoop and her younger brother, still in his school khakis and blue shirt, leans out to watch, too. Nether takes just 15 minutes to set his ladder and paste his poster, alternately dipping his brush into the gooey bucket and pushing it across his two-piece poster, placed side-by-side on the boarded window across the street from the kids.

Suddenly, the image of a bandana-masked man, hammer in one hand, red “X” in the other, stares down from the vacant brick rowhouse, as if the character had been caught in the act on the near-desolate street. As Nether steps from the ladder, making sure he hasn’t missed flattening any spots, the little girl opens her door. “I like your art,” she says. Her brother agrees. “I like it, too.”

“Thank you,” Nether responds, turning around. “Do you like to draw?” he asks the children, who nod, affirmatively.

“Well, you know, I’m sure you’d get in trouble if you drew on the walls inside your house,” Nether tells his young audience. “But I bet if you drew outside on the sidewalk or on the walls, no one would mind.”

(Postscript: Justin Nethercut and Elise Victoria founded Arts + Parks in 2017, an organization that seeks to blend street art and purposeful landscaping to create holistic spaces for Baltimore neighborhoods.)