After a mural Jerod Black had spent 18 hours and $250 on was quickly painted over on Friday morning before he could finish it, he tried to stay positive.
“If life gives you lemons, make lemon margaritas and fest the s--- out of it,” Black said.
Black’s mural was eventually replaced by one advocating for Fight, a student senate ticket, but no one is sure who painted over the mural first — members of Fight said it was already defaced when they started painting.
Black, an Athens resident, had planned on finishing the mural, which depicted an OU student turning nature into an apocalyptic wasteland by littering, on Friday.
“Today was the day,” Black said. “All my friends were gonna come out.”
Black’s friends called him in the morning to tell him the mural had been painted over. He responded by painting a new image that included a heart-shaped balloon on the wall of Bentley Annex.
For the painting on Bentley, which was not on the graffiti wall, Black said he received a ticket and will go to court this week.
David Parkhill, the presidential candidate for the Fight ticket, wasn’t there when the image was painted over. He said the image was already defaced by the time Fight painted over it.
“Somebody tagged it last [Thursday] night, and we didn’t paint over the mural,” Parkhill said. “Everybody that was at the wall [Friday] morning said that wasn’t what they painted over.”
Parkhill said he called Black and apologized. Black, however, said the decision to paint over the mural was still wrong — but emphasized that what’s done is done and he wasn’t holding a grudge.
“It’s still a bad decision,” Black said. “They should’ve let it stand and let me fix that. It’s not believable to me, and it’s irrelevant.”
This isn’t the first time Black’s work has been defaced. In September, a mural depicting an African safari scene that he helped paint was covered by an image of someone being hanged.
