Over Labor Day weekend, local street artist Matador installed a new work outside the artist’s boutique, MegaFauna, near 31st and Blake Streets in Denver. Depicting the silhouette of a semi-automatic rifle below the recognizable “SCHOOL” text in yellow, the sign reads “7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Thought & Prayer Expected.”
By Tuesday morning the sign had been removed by city officials, but not before tweet from a resident got Denver’s attention. While there’s no actual school within the sign’s immediate vicinity, the closest public school is less than a mile south.
“I feel an interview would take away from the power of the piece,” the artist said in response to a request from the local Fox station. “It’s a conversation starter in the finest form. What art should be. It evokes a visceral response.”
Thoughts and prayers expected #denver pic.twitter.com/AhY3enalMz
— LeAnn (@comesailawayyy) September 4, 2018
Matt Schooley, a manager at the Rino Supply Company on 31st and Blake, told The Denver Post he did a double take when he pulled up to work Monday. “To me, that stuff’s cool,” he says. “We need a wake-up call. It’s gotten a lot of people around the neighborhood to talk about it.”
