BRATTLEBORO — Downtown Brattleboro will come alive this fall with color, creativity and community spirit during “Sucka Punch: Graffiti Jam,” a free, three-day celebration of graffiti and hip-hop culture. Taking place on Arch Street, across from the Latchis Theatre, the event kicks off during Brattleboro’s first-Friday Gallery Walk on Oct. 3 at 5 p.m. and continues through Sunday, Oct. 5.
Organized by the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) and the Brandon, Vermont-based family art collective Juniper Creative Arts, in partnership with Stone Arch Properties, Sucka Punch will feature local, regional, and internationally recognized graffiti writers and artists creating large-scale works along a portion of Arch Street, transforming walls into vibrant murals before viewers’ eyes. The weekend will also include interactive artmaking activities for all ages, a community mural wall, food vendors, DJs, and a Saturday evening block party. All activities are family-friendly, rain-or-shine, and open to all. Details are available at brattleboromuseum.org.
“Graffiti has always been about energy, connection, and community,” said Will Kasso Condry, co-founder of Juniper Creative Arts and winner of the 2022 Vermont Prize, in a release. “Jams like this keep us young — they tap into the spirit of creativity that comes from youth culture and from people coming together to celebrate expression.”
The idea for Sucka Punch arose when Mike Cota of Stone Arch Properties, owner of several buildings in downtown Brattleboro, envisioned a graffiti festival taking place on Arch Street. He reached out to Danny Lichtenfeld, director of BMAC, to see about turning that dream into reality, and Lichtenfeld proposed that they collaborate with Juniper Creative Arts. With Condry’s decades of experience organizing and participating in public mural projects and graffiti jams, the partners soon saw an opportunity to bring that energy to southern Vermont.
Juniper Creative Arts co-founder Jennifer Herrera Condry notes that Sucka Punch, like all of Juniper’s public-art projects, is rooted in four guiding principles: education, creative expression, beautification, and community engagement. “This event will showcase professional artists, invite the public to collaborate on a community mural, and create space for people of all ages to learn about graffiti as a living art form,” she said. “It’s about bringing people together and showing how powerful this once marginalized culture can be when it’s embraced.”
One of hip-hop’s four foundational elements, graffiti emerged as an art form in Philadelphia and New York in the 1960s and ’70s and has since become a global movement. Sucka Punch honors those roots while creating something new for southern Vermont—a weekend-long festival that blends live art, music, and community celebration.
“Some people continue to see graffiti through the lens of vandalism,” said Juniper’s Jennifer Herrera Condry. “One of our goals with this event is to reinforce the message that graffiti is a respected global art movement that beautifies neglected spaces and builds community.”
“All of us at BMAC are excited to team up with Juniper Creative Arts, and we’re grateful to property owner Mike Cota for providing the space and the ‘canvas’ for a bunch of amazing DJs and graffiti artists to come do their thing in Brattleboro,” said Lichtenfeld. “We love sharing art and supporting creative expression outside the museum walls, often in surprising places, so we were totally on board with Juniper’s concept of Sucka Punch as ‘the graffiti jam you didn’t see coming.’”
Sucka Punch: Graffiti Jam is supported by a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Arts & Social Cohesion Fund.
BMAC is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Brattleboro Food Co-op, Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Brattleboro Subaru, C&S Wholesale Grocers, and Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters.
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