Kyle Holbrook

Kyle Holbrook is a Pittsburgh-based artist and activist. He is the founder of MLK Murals and KH Design. Raised in a rough neighborhood, he began creating murals in public places in his home city. His organizations are geared to giving young people in such neighborhoods an outlet that also improves old, abandoned and deteriorated structures. Holbrook expanded his organization into the Miami area in 2010, and now includes Detroit, Atlanta and Brazil.

Early life

Holbrook grew up in the Wilkinsburg neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 1990s,^[1] where he attended secondary schools that had a heavy level of gang violence. Holbrook has stated that this background is at the root of his career employing youth to execute large-scale public murals.^[2] Holbrook is also an alum of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh,^[3] graduating with a degree in graphic design in 2002.^[4]

Artwork

Holbrook began creating murals on the walls of buildings in Pittsburgh Housing Authority communities, as well as Pittsburgh retail centers, and the Port Authority, some commissioned by city agencies.^[3] One of his first major commissions was a 65-foot mural near the Monroeville Mall.^[5] In 2005 Holbrook co-created the Martin Luther King mural at the corner of Wood Street and Franklin Avenue with artists Chris Savido and George Gist. Holbrook has stated that this mural, in his childhood neighborhood, is located near where several of his childhood friends were murdered.^[6]

Holbrook’s work We Fall Down but We Get Back up is located on Paulson Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Holbrook painted the mural in 2008, and incorporates the faces of the community activists that lobbied the city to allow the mural's public creation, and other community members active in the area.^[1] He has painted more than two hundred murals in the City of Pittsburgh^[6] and is the owner of the Pittsburgh-based firm KH Design.^[7]

Non-profit work

Holbrook is the executive director and CEO of MLK Mural, alternatively known as “Moving the Lives of Kids Mural Project”,^[8] founded in 2002.^[9] MLK Mural is a youth organization that brings large-scale mural work to Black communities in Florida in order to develop artistic talent at a young age,^[10] that pays its participants for their work^[11] with project budgets funded by grant organizations up to half a million dollars.^[12] Among its projects, the group executed The Broken Windows Project, which covered 75 abandoned and underused buildings in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, using a team of artists and around 200 local students.^[13]

In 2008, Holbrook also led the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway Community Mural Project, which engaged 100 students to paint 26 murals in eight neighbourhoods adjacent to the bus route.^[14] Students are paid for their work in the various projects.^[15][16] Overall the organization has painted more than 100 large public space murals by 2009.^[8] Founded in Pittsburgh, in 2010 the organization opened its first office in Miami, painting 50 murals around the city between then and 2015.^[17] He has also helped students to create murals in US cities including Detroit and Atlanta, as well as in Brazil, Haiti,^[18] Uganda, and Portugal. He has also sat on the board of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture.^[11] In his mural projects he has partnered with other artists, including Rayonna Woodson.^[19]

Films

In 2013 Holbrook directed the documentary film Art is Life. The Miami Times wrote of the film that it:

"is based on the notion that youth in the hood, no matter what part of the country, often lack a path or a toolkit for survival. And even if that toolkit is available, one sometimes needs an guide or an angel to illuminate where it is."^[10]

References