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A homecoming, not a victory lap<\/p>\n
Deep Ellum\u2019s mythology is usually told through sound<\/a>: blues ghosts, punk flyers, guitar feedback spilling from doorways, the long afterimage of Trees, shuttered venues like Club Clearview and rooms that seemed to sweat cigarette smoke. But the neighborhood\u2019s visual identity mattered just as much.<\/p>\n The walls did not decorate the scene; they became part of it.<\/p>\n Brad Smith, one of the returning artists and a driving force behind the exhibition, realized early on that murals could do more than fill a blank space. He also had a direct tie to the Observer, contributing illustrations in the early 1990s, work he said he considered an honor because he was given the freedom to do what he wanted.<\/p>\n In Deep Ellum, he saw art become a civic engine. He described the idea as \u201cart-based economic development,\u201d a concept he later carried beyond Dallas. The phrase may sound polished now, the sort of thing that appears in grant proposals and city planning decks, but in \u201980s Deep Ellum, it had dirt on its boots.<\/p>\n Smith recalled that artists had backing from the city and the business community, which gave them room to work. The murals helped create the atmosphere that drew people in \u2014 money, music, risk and attention came with them. A once-overlooked neighborhood became, in his words, \u201cmagical\u201d and \u201celectric.\u201d<\/p>\n The power of paint before Dallas had a name for it<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s Deep Ellum years weren\u2019t about making walls look good. What\u2019s more, he knew art could change how a city evolved. He saw murals as tools for transformation, not accessories. Art, he said, has power in society. It can make people stop, gather, point, argue and remember. <\/p>\n That is the practical argument for public art. The poetic one is simpler: A mural gives a building a pulse.<\/p>\n Smith also knows the bargain built into that work. Murals are temporary, and walls get sold. Buildings get scraped and new owners paint beige over someone\u2019s best year. Weather, money and municipal enthusiasm all take their turns with the roller, too. That impermanence gives \u201cOGs Return to Deep Ellum\u201d its edge. The exhibition gathers artists whose public work helped create the neighborhood\u2019s visual memory, even when the original surfaces are gone.<\/p>\n Turning the streets into a gallery<\/p>\n For Greg \u201cOzone\u201d Contestabile, Deep Ellum offered something rare: space. Not official space or blessed-by-committee space. Real space. The kind that lets an artist learn in public before anyone has figured out how to package it.<\/p>\n \u201cDeep Elm gave me the opportunity to paint without too much worry about getting in trouble or busted,\u201d Contestabile said, using the old spelling that still clings to the place like wheat paste. He described the neighborhood\u2019s walls as \u201can instant gallery,\u201d a place where he could paint something and know people would see it.<\/p>\n For a graffiti artist in Dallas, visibility was both reward and risk. He started painting in Deep Ellum in 1989, developing characters such as Flip the Frog and working alongside artists including Hawley.<\/p>\n He also helped carve out a legal painting spot in the \u201cAce parking lot\u201d next to the now-closed Deep Sushi, a small but meaningful act in a city that has often treated street art as a problem until it becomes profitable enough to be rebranded as culture.<\/p>\n For the \u201cOGs Return\u201d exhibition, Contestabile is working on a piece called \u201cAerosol Anarchy,\u201d which he described as a cockroach with forearms holding spray cans in a fight scene at a crosswalk. It sounds funny, scrappy and slightly unkillable \u2014 in other words, very Deep Ellum.<\/p>\n Deep Ellum offered friendship, chance and a rave review<\/p>\n Haveron\u2019s path into the Dallas art world sounds almost too improbable, which is usually how the best Deep Ellum stories begin.<\/p>\n The artist started creating out of anger, after seeing his homeland plowed under for environmental reasons. He was discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest by Murray Smither, whose connection led Haveron to James Surls and Charmaine Locke. Surls and Locke put him in the major exhibition \u201cThe House Show\u201d at the Lawndale Annex in Houston, where Haveron met legendary gallerist Gene Binder. When Locke called to ask how much his pieces in the show cost, Haveron barely knew art could be shown or sold.<\/p>\n After meeting Haveron at \u201cThe House Show,\u201d Binder bought all of Haveron\u2019s pieces in the exhibition and became a close friend, bringing collectors from Houston and Dallas to see his work. Binder\u2019s gallery became a crucial connection for Haveron, eventually tying him to Deep Ellum, where he had several shows and became part of the neighborhood\u2019s creative bloodstream.<\/p>\n Another key figure was Russell David Hobbs<\/a>, who wanted Haveron to show at his rock \u2019n\u2019 roll Theatre Gallery in Deep Ellum. When critic Janet Kutner gave the show a rave review, Haveron said it helped put the scene on the map and made people want to come to the neighborhood.<\/p>\n From there came the friendships: Hobbs, Jeffrey Liles<\/a>, Bob Watson<\/a> and Swaney. Haveron remembered nights at Trees and Club Clearview, where Swaney would give him free drink tickets. Those details mattered because scenes are built by people letting each other in the door.<\/p>\n Haveron\u2019s memories also carry a warning. He left Deep Ellum for Oak Cliff in part because of crime, and he is not sure the old Wild West spirit can be recreated. If the city gets too involved, he said, the result becomes sterile.<\/p>\n When walls disappear, the work still speaks<\/p>\n Dallas recently got a blunt reminder that public art often lives on borrowed time. Downtown, much of Robert Wyland\u2019s \u201cWhaling Wall 82\u201d was painted over<\/a> ahead of a new World Cup-related mural, leaving only part of the original marine scene intact. The decision sparked anger because murals are never just paint \u2014 work of art becomes landmarks, memory devices and emotional shortcuts.<\/p>\n Deep Ellum artists know this story well.<\/p>\n The neighborhood has always been a place where art appeared boldly and vanished suddenly. Murals came down. Clubs closed<\/a>. The Art Bar, Club Clearview and other spaces that nurtured visual chaos passed into memory. Campagna\u2019s projects, Clay Austin\u2019s immersive work, Smith\u2019s murals, Ozone\u2019s walls and Hawley\u2019s collaborations all belonged to a living environment that never promised permanence.<\/p>\n Austin, one of the returning artists, is especially inseparable from that history. His legacy runs through Deep Ellum and Club Clearview<\/a>, where art was not confined to frames but spread across rooms, floors, bodies and nights. That is why the surviving work matters. Paintings and objects carry the hand, the era and the argument forward.<\/p>\n What Deep Ellum needs now<\/p>\n The exhibition arrives at a complicated moment for Deep Ellum: still beloved, still busy, still capable of surprise, but more managed than the version these artists first entered, when an empty wall could become a public event before anyone formed a committee.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/01_Brad-Smith_Dallas-Observer_1991_Illustration.jpg\")
Brad Smith\u2019s illustration for a 1991 cover of the Dallas Observer turned that year\u2019s \u201cBest of Dallas\u201d issue into a vivid, off-kilter snapshot of the city\u2019s nightlife.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Deep_Ellum_Artists_Dallas-Observer.jpg\")
An early-days Deep Ellum gathering at the now-closed Art Bar captures several artists whose work helped define the neighborhood\u2019s visual culture \u2014 among them Brad Smith, Albert Scherbarth, Jeoff Davis, Frank Tolbert, Brad Ellis and Clay Austin.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/01_Greg-Contestabile_Brad-Smith_90s_Club-Clearview_Dallas-Observer.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
An early \u201990s wall facing Club Clearview featured work by two Deep Ellum artists: Greg \u201cOzone\u201d Contestabile\u2019s piece at center and a Brad Smith mural to the left of Greg\u2019s spray-can character.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/02_Brad-Smith_1989_Sacred-Texans_Big-Tex_Dallas-Observer.jpg\")
Brad Smith\u2019s \u201cScared Texans\u201d appeared in the 1989 images of Big Tex exhibition at the Art Bar for a show he curated that reimagined the State Fair icon.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/01_Bill-Haveron_Four-Diamonds_Deep-Ellum_Dallas_Observer.jpg\")
Bill Haveron\u2019s 2012 pencil drawing \u201cFour Diamonds\u201d pays tribute to four of his outsider artist friends: Rev. J.L. Hunter, Isaac Smith, Willard \u201cThe Texas Kid\u201d Watson and Rev. Johnnie Swearingen. <\/p>\n