the street is our gallery

London based French artist, Camille Walala joined The Unexpected in Downtown Fort Smith for the first time, taking over all dimensions of a gas station and completing one of the manythrilling new public art pieces curated by global creative house Justkids, who continued to enrich the cityscape and community of Downtown Fort Smith since 5 years in a row through The Unexpected art event.

Located at the main intersection of Grand Avenue and 11th street the Walala Pump & Go gas station features the artist eclectic trademark tribal pop style. Vibrant geometric color patterns highlight existing elements with a dynamic brio. “The artist’s bold and playful style incredibly enhances built space and architecture, creating welcoming social spaces. After five years of curating diverse visual projects in Fort Smith, I learned that a big part of good place-making is creating community and a sense of re-discovery of the beauty that is there, in the city, all along, and Camille’s work does just that” expressed Justkids curator Charlotte Dutoit on the decision to bring forward this artist project.

Influenced by her travels, the memphis movement, the optical art masters and the Southern Ndebele tribe women, the 1950’s architectonic support was perfect for the artist to transform it into an eye-catching social space in just one week, thanks to the amazing community effort and collaboration of local artist Nate Meyers (Buffalo) and a group of skillful volunteers.

“I love this canvas, it was exciting to do something really bold, that stands out on a bigger scale. We had a great team of people working with us for a few days, most of them were locals from Fort Smith who came to help and it has been an amazing execution of the project.”, mentioned the artist who enjoyed her time in Arkansas.

For more information visit www.justkidsofficial.com