Basketball court in Rock Hill’s Sunset Park is now home to a ‘beautiful piece of art’
On a once-asphalt court in Rock Hill’s Sunset Park, a mural of a giant basketball, sporting white and orange sneakers, stands out among the grass and trees. Bright colors and geometric shapes surround the personified basketball in the center of the court, which now marks the site of the city’s first-ever basketball court mural.
The “Sunset Park Basketball Mural,” at 300 Friedheim Road, was created by lead artist Garrison Gist, who was chosen by community members for the project.
Gist grew up in the Sunset Park neighborhood and his grandmother still lives a block from the park. Forbes-featured artist Frankie Zombie, a South Carolina native, assisted with the project.
The new mural, part of the city’s Mural Mile initiative, is now the third one currently on display.
“We see that art is not necessarily done because of the final product,” Evan Goetz, marketing coordinator for the city’s economic and urban development department, told The Herald. “Yes — it’s a beautiful piece of art to look at, but it’s really the process that can create the most amount of change. The process being the artists working with the community, or the community getting to choose who the artist was. And then, them coming to this basketball court to socialize and to have fun with each other just happens to be around this beautiful piece of art.”
The initiative, a collaboration between the city, Knowledge Park, the Old Town Association and the Rock Hill Development Corporation, elicits local, regional and national artists to create murals throughout downtown Rock Hill. The city is planning to put up a fourth mural within the next few weeks, Goetz said.
The Sunset Park neighborhood has been identified by the city as one in “greatest need” of help to alleviate housing issues, reduce property and violent crime, and improve quality of life, according to a release from the city.
The city’s Resource and Education Development Initiative works to identify low-income, high-crime neighborhoods and provide those areas, including Sunset Park, with numerous agency, program and funding resources, according to the release.
Rock Hill’s two other murals are near the Warehouses on White Street.
The initiative’s first mural, completed in April by international muralist Osiris Rain, is on the side of the Warehouses on White’s Dust Off Brewing. The colorful mural, which spans the entire building side, spells out “Rock Hill,” covered by numerous faces.
The second, which went up in July, is painted on White Street. The design, in block letters, reads “No Room For Racism,” a city motto that dates back to the tenure of Mayor Doug Echols. The first letters are filled in with the colors in the city’s logo, and the last nine letters display the faces of the Friendship Nine in black and white.
The members of the mural initiative plan to curate at least five more across the city in 2021.
