Later, he discovered that a Facebook group had been created by fans to share locations of mouse door sightings. He took pictures and posted them on Instagram under (His name is a reference to the area code in the eastern part of the Bay Area.)Īlmost immediately, he got feedback on Instagram from other street artists who wanted to collaborate with him or trade art pieces. He put the doors up at night in “ignored spaces,” such as concrete walls along a sidewalk, at the end of an abandoned loading dock or in parking ramps. He attached them to walls and poles with an industrial-grade adhesive. It could evolve as iterations of the mouse door multiplied.Īn early evolution was making the doors out of a more durable plastic resin using silicone molds. He realized that his first attempt didn’t need to be great. ![]() “I was 54 years old at the time and hadn’t done art since childhood,” he wrote in an artist’s statement. His first door, cast out of plaster using a latex mold of a model built of clay, was attached to the base of a park bench in Alameda in November 2015. ![]() That led to the idea of a mouse-sized door, a simple shape that he could paint and decorate, sort of a miniature, street-level canvas. He had rodents on his mind because of the images of three-eyed mice by street artist Neon Savage in London, and the rats depicted by pioneering graffiti and stencil street artists Blek le Rat of France and the England-based Banksy. Whatever form his art would take, it couldn’t be too controversial. (Many of the European street artists he follows mount their works on walls high above the street level.)įinally, Alameda is a pretty middle-class place, according to Mows510. “I wanted something small, but something flat,” he said.Īnd since he was in his mid-50s, it probably needed to be something low to the ground, something he could quickly install in a public place without drawing too much attention to himself. So whatever he came up with would have to be fairly simple and easy to execute. The trouble was Mows510 wasn’t an artist. “I eventually just wanted to join the conversation,” he said. He wondered if it was something he could do. Mows510 was especially drawn to three-dimensional works attached to walls. He had long been a fan and follower of street artists worldwide, especially people such as Gregos, Invader and Cityzenkane, who make unsanctioned art pieces mounted in urban spaces. Mows510 lives in a northern Twin Cities suburb, but he got his start as a street artist in 2015 when he was living in Alameda, Calif. “Sometimes when I’m doing these doors, I’m processing loss,” he said. Another was an homage to the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after it was damaged by fire. A rainbow-colored door became a sort of shrine expressing grief after the 2016 Orlando gay nightclub shooting. One door expressed his sadness at the death of comic book creator Stan Lee. He’s made doors urging people to vote, and doors that are tributes to Prince, Bob Dylan and Charles Schulz. They are blank slates with the potential for “communicating ideas, celebrating events, mourning loss and collaborating with other artists,” wrote Mows510 in an artist’s statement. The doors are more than just wee and twee. One at the Minnesota Opera offices had tiny, mice-sized opera posters next to it. A door with a little ax sticking out of it was put at a Bad Axe Throwing venue. Go!” was placed beneath the book drop of a library. A door with an image from the children’s book “Go, Dog. A door with a fire department logo was installed at a fire station. Mows510 has glued a door covered with crime tape on a curb near a police station. They’re installed low to the ground in “in-between spaces” at breweries, restaurants, bagel shops, comic book shops, book stores and bike stores. If you haven’t seen a Mows510 installation around town, look down. “People who don’t like street art and graffiti, they like these.” “The mouse door is inoffensive,” said Mows510, who asked to keep his real identity hidden. Mounted at the foot of a wall, the bottom of a streetlight or the base of a utility box, they look like the entrances for the home of a cartoon mouse. Each one comes complete with old-fashioned hinges, a doorknob, keyhole, welcome mat and an adjacent window glowing with a bright yellow light. Mows510 (pronounced “mouse”) makes brightly painted, three-dimensional doors about 4 by 3 inches, roughly the size of a cellphone. ![]() ![]() Street artist Mows510 is the anonymous creator of hundreds of whimsical mouse doors scattered around the Twin Cities area – and the world.
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