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This newly finished display by FEL300ft is on HopCat at Woodward and Canfield.
This guy on the right has sprayed paint on walls and canvases for more than three decades, though we have no idea what name is on checks paying for his commissioned works, which are signed FEL3000ft.
This artist says it took about 47 hours to create the HopCat murat.
That's also the only name the artist in his early 40s uses on social media, on his website and for a three-week solo exhibition at a Royal Oak gallery three years ago.
"I started writing graffiti in 1982," his home page says, "and since then I have done work for many major companies and painted in many different mediums."
This month brought a public project in Midtown that "was by far one of the most challenging of all I have done to date," he says on Facebook about the vivid display above. It's on the Canfield side of HopCat pub, opening Dec. 13 at 4265 Woodward as the fourth site of a Grand Rapids-based group.
"The wall is two floors high, 60 feet wide I think," adds FEL, who says he "painted it [in] what I consider the coldest weather. I worked first day from 4 pm-3 am, day two 9 am-12 pm, day three 9 am-6 am the next day."
In all, the new business commissioned five local artists to brighten its exterior facades. Only one, Kobie Solomon, uses his actual name. The other works are smaller.
A Distinct Life blog post about FEL's 2011 show at the 333East Gallery in Royal Oak calls him "a prominent figure in Detroit’s graffiti history." He's among the early 1990s pioneers who decorated the unused Dequindre rail yard near downtown Detroit that's now the Dequindre Cut bike and pedestrian path. He's mentioned in a 2011 book titled "The History of American Graffiti."
A whimsical self-hug is tucked into one of his works.
Here's part of the anonymous post three years ago at the lifestyle blog launched by sneaker mogel Rick Williams of Burn Rubber:
After decades of standing in the shadows, ducking cops, mentoring other writers, and being viewed by society as an outcast, FEL3000ft fully emerges to be recognized for his talent. . . .
A Detroit native who fell in with several talented taggers from NYC before entering his teens, he quickly became an apprentice without a master – a young wunderkind enthralled by the colorful and powerful possibilities of urban murals.
His education followed the usual pattern: a great deal of trial and error, learning the techniques of those who came before, immersing himself in comic books and graphic novels, and (of course) surviving the inevitable and intrusive concern of adult authority figures who didn’t always share in his youthful enthusiasm. . . .
He has also channeled his abilities into quite a few successful and notable commercial avenues. Sirius Satellite has benefited from his gifts and he contributed a noteworthy piece to the city during Detroit’s Tricentennial celebration back in 2001.
That post and the artist's site have no explanation for his nom d'art. We assume he's not a skydiver who fell 3,000 feet, so perhaps F.E.L. are his initials and 3,000 feet is the width of a wall his oversize imagination dreams of enlivening. Or not. (Amuse us with your guess in a comment below.)
Here's a video from a Chevrolet project at the South by Southwest festival in Austin two years ago:
