The Banana Mural on Southeast Division Bruised by Vandals

Portland’s second-oldest surviving street mural has fallen on hard times.

Art Fills the Void, known more colloquially as “the banana mural” at Southeast 12th Avenue and Division Street, was vandalized earlier this month along nearly the entire length of the banana, about 25 feet.

Portland Street Art Alliance, a nonprofit that helps maintain existing murals and facilitate new ones, discovered the damage Nov. 13 and jumped into action to repair it by Nov. 15. It required a hot pressure-wash to clean the wall and reapplication of a protective clear coat.

“It’s a pretty urgent situation when those incidents happen, so we drop everything to get it done,” says Tiffany Conklin, PSAA’s executive director.

The alliance estimates last week’s cleaning bill will be about $450. The banana mural costs about $1,000 a year to maintain, PSAA says. The organization started a GoFundMe last week to help with these costs, and it has already exceeded its $1,000 goal.

The banana mural holds a special place in Portland’s street art history. It was originally painted in 1982 by an anonymous art crew called Gorilla Wallflare. The group of rogue sign-painters, including the late Frank DeSantis, painted it without permission in broad daylight wearing caution vests, Conklin says. In Portland, only the 1981 Malcolm X mural on Northeast Alberta Street is older, according to PSAA’s research.

Since Gorilla Wallflare has long since disbanded, maintenance of the mural fell on the property owner and the community from 1982 to 2015, with varying levels of success. PSAA stepped in about a decade ago to document Art Fills the Void’s history and help with its maintenance.

The city of Portland pressure-washed it a few times over the years. Conklin was told by city staffers that “that funding stream does not exist anymore,” she says.

So, responsibility for Art Fills the Void’s upkeep has fallen on PSAA, which is an unusual arrangement for the organization. The nonprofit maintains its own portfolio of about 300 murals around town, but Art Fills the Void is the one existing historical piece that it has taken on as a labor of love. But that labor costs, and that’s why the organization had to ask the community to help out. (It’s also gotten grants, including $2,000 from Southeast Uplift for a full restoration in 2015.)

“The storyline for us is, Portland has this historic resource in our murals, but there’s no city support to help maintain them,” Conklin says. “So, unfortunately, it falls on the community.”