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SPRING <strong>2022</strong> | 27<br />
Stepping up for a friend<br />
BY ALENA KUZUB<br />
Wilson Lautner dedicated the event<br />
“Confluence: Unifying Communities<br />
through Public Art” to Chris Knittle, a<br />
Marblehead resident, older brother of<br />
Lautner’s best friend, and a street artist.<br />
He died four years ago at the age of 24.<br />
Lautner called Knittle’s mother,<br />
Mimi, and suggested honoring Chris<br />
and showing his work during the event.<br />
Chris was a street artist, often<br />
painting on the walls of abandoned<br />
buildings. He came to painting and<br />
spray painting through skateboarding<br />
and snowboarding, said Mimi, who is a<br />
painter herself and the president of the<br />
Marblehead Arts Association.<br />
“He could never really find his<br />
place until he started hanging with the<br />
skateboarders and the snowboarders<br />
and that became his world,” she said.<br />
“He found, I think, a very supportive,<br />
accepting community in his fellow<br />
artists.”<br />
Chris developed his style through<br />
spray painting and through dozens<br />
of black-bound sketchbooks that he<br />
would endlessly draw and paint in with<br />
markers and colored pencil to work out<br />
his forms.<br />
“He struggled a lot through his<br />
later teens and early 20s, “ Mimi said.<br />
“Painting brought a calm, positive<br />
healing energy to him.”<br />
For the exhibition, Mimi printed<br />
and framed about 20-30 12 by 12<br />
photos of Chris’ work from his<br />
Instagram account that covered an<br />
entire wall like a collage.<br />
“That just was stunning the way<br />
that it came together,” said Mimi. “So<br />
many of Chris' friends, people I hadn't<br />
seen, came out to support this and buy<br />
his art and bring it home and have it in<br />
their space.”<br />
She said that the experience of<br />
seeing Chris’ work be part of the event<br />
that connected a lot of people who<br />
didn’t have much in common and that<br />
brought together some of Chris’ friends<br />
was very healing for their family.<br />
“It was just a very beautiful tribute,”<br />
said Mimi. “We are all human and we<br />
have a commonality, a shared life, joys<br />
and struggles that are often reflected in<br />
art, in music and that I think is what<br />
Wilson is trying to bring together.”<br />
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The late Chris Knittle was a Marblehead resident and street artist.<br />
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE KNITTLE FAMILY<br />
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