Street art: Pay attention to the road, not this awesome wall art on 6th Avenue
Driving east on 6th, you'll notice a wall o' black and white photos mounted on the side of a building. Be careful not to do too much noticing, though, because these images, especially the one of the naked woman's breasts, may have the same effect on drivers a car wreck does -- slowed traffic, people not paying attention, gawking. 
Giving graffiti a run for its money.
The side of the building at 701 West 6th Avenue has been getting a lot of attention. It's covered in 14 black and white images of various things in a collection called The Big Picture. "This is just the beginning, especially with this being photography month," says Travis DeMoney, one of the artists who put it together.
DeMoney and and Mark Sink, another established local artist, spent three hours last Saturday, March 24, putting the photos on the side of the building. Most of the ones used were taken during a toy camera show Mark Sink hosted at the Illiterate Gallery on 82 S. Broadway, DeMoney says, but DeMoney contributed his own pieces as well. (By the way, Illiterate Gallery was voted Best Rising-Star Gallery in Westword's Best of Denver 2011.)
The images themselves are standard prints suspended on the building using wheatpaste - a mixture of vegetable starch and water often used by artists because of its sticking power and sturdiness. DeMoney and Sink applied it to the side of the building, then put on the images and applied another coat.
The artists were given permission to use the highly visible building by its owner, David Wood, who owns and operates .dr5 CHROME, the only film processing company worldwide to create black and white transparencies and inter-positives for almost any black-and-white film. So, in layman's terms, he's one of a kind.
"This wall is always getting tagged with graffiti. I'd rather have this up than have the wall be tagged," says Wood. "They just wanted to have access to any wall, and this is a high profile wall." Wood also lent his services by printing the images.
There are other installations of The Big Picture elsewhere in Denver, including one on 15th Avenue near the Museum of Contemporary Art, at Redline and near Buffalo Exchange and City, O' City on 13th Street.
So that's why there's always a traffic jam on 6th, 15th, Arapahoe and 13th during rush hour.
Photos by Cory Lamz
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