The Richmonder 25: ‘Silly Genius’ is creating a city where everyone can be a creator
Taron Sparks, a hopelessly creative kid, grew up without a single art museum in reach.
Now, one mural at a time, he’s turning the streets, the road signs and even the GRTC buses of Richmond into the grassroots gallery he’s always dreamed of. Art is visible no matter where you walk in the River City, thanks to Sparks and his community of contemporary creators.
Sparks, better known as “Silly Genius,” is the founder of All City Art Club, a collective of Richmonders using street art to brighten underserved spaces and their communities — without gentrifying them.
'I'm just gonna do it myself'
Sparks, 45, came to Richmond in 2004 to pursue art, one of the only ways to escape his small hometown 100 miles south, he said.
“All of my engagement with art was through a TV screen, a magazine or reading comic books,” Sparks said. “There was no real tangible (way of) getting to see and experience art.”
Sparks spent much of the 2000s hanging around Richmond’s Southside and the VCU area. He remembers when the Institute for Contemporary Art was a gas station and the site of the VCU’s upcoming CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation was a fried chicken spot.
As Sparks sees it, there were more opportunities to be creative back then — when business was cheaper and fewer buildings were bought out by developers. In today’s Richmond, Sparks has had to deal with new owners coming in and painting over his group’s murals.
“The work that we try to make isn’t conducive to what they’re trying to sell,” Sparks said.
He got his own start designing clothes and spraying graffiti on abandoned buildings. For Sparks, creating art means creating accessible sights without a ticket price.
“If you live in an area with a bunch of run-down buildings, broken windows and all that sort of thing, there is a sort-of psychological effect on you at some point, like, ‘Nobody cares about this place, they definitely don’t care about me in this place,’” Sparks said. “But when everything is covered in art and looks great, there is a sort of joy and appreciation you have.”
It wasn’t until Richmond’s now-famous Street Art Festival and a city-sponsored Arts District rolled around in the early 2010s when Sparks got to upgrade from graffiti to full-scale murals.
But that appetite for public art never came to his side of town. At one point, an open call was put out for more mural locations. Sparks recalls submitting a bunch of empty walls along Manchester’s Hull Street.
“Their response was that ‘These are nice walls, but they’re all too far off the beaten path.’ I was like, ‘What does that even mean? Like just just drive over here!’ And I guess they were trying to stick to the more shiny, touristy parts of town,” Sparks said. “That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna just do it myself,’” he continued.
Payton Kifus
An art club in the city, for all
Sparks’ All City Art Club has been planting seeds and watering the soil across Richmond’s art scene since 2019.
Sparks and fellow artist Prentice Carroll started out with a grant — every penny of which they used to paint murals. That ballooned into more commissions, grants and creators including Chris Visions, Austin “Auz” Miles, Nadd Harvin, Hip Hop Henry, Dominique “DAHM” Lee, George Carroll, Sydneyola and Kay Coghill, among others.
Beyond murals, the organization has held art classes for kids, dj sessions with burgers and fries, a 2024 mayoral forum focusing on arts and culture, an art exhibition disguised as a record store and a number of intentionally multimedia events.
“Hey, we painted this mural. Come out. We’re gonna have a cookout. One of the DJ homies will pull up, spin. Somebody donated a moon bounce to us one day, just like little stuff like that. Just reasons to get the community outside,” Sparks said, explaining their work.
“(We) try to create these experiences that aren’t just white walls, you walk in, look at the painting, sip some free champagne, walk right back out,” Sparks said.
In 2023, Sparks reworked a Hotchkiss Park basketball court into a public roller rink complete with a mural, to recognize the activity’s importance within Black and queer communities. The idea came to him during a trip to Detroit, where his jaw dropped at all of the mixed-use public spaces propped up by the city’s parks and recreation department.
“I was like, ‘Yo we have all of the tools to do this at home in Richmond. Why aren’t we?” Sparks said.
One grant later, he got his wish.
“There’s so much opportunity for Richmond to do cool stuff like that, and it just doesn’t happen because there’s no infrastructure to support it,” Sparks said. “Like you try to go to the city, and there’s all these permitting processes and this bureaucratic red tape you have to go through to do something very simple.”
In fact, the All City Art Club previously lobbied Mayor Danny Avula to update his Richmond 300 Plan to break down those barriers — along with better supporting artists through affordable housing and studio spaces, funding opportunities and a dedicated office for cultural affairs.
On one occasion, Sparks knocked on the door of 1224 Hull Street, looking for a wall to paint his next mural on.
That knock was answered by the building’s owner, Tyrone Davis. He bought it in 2023 after no other businesses would offer up a space for him to have a mural painted of his son Tyrone Davis Jr., who was killed through gun violence just blocks away.
Sparks and his artist friends would end up covering the entire side of that building in a vivid display — and then the building next door. The dilapidated parking lot in between is now adorned in picnic tables and string lights. “The Lot RVA” is home to Dress Blue BBQ, hemp clothing shop Loud Amerika and a venue space for performers. Plans are in motion to paint the mural of Davis’ son nearby.
All City Art Club finally found a home this year on Grace Street between Godfrey’s and Vinyl Conflict. Sparks said they plan to use it as a low-barrier space to be “as weird and creative” as they want.
Creating against the grain
Between all their projects, Sparks — who hustles to pay rent like everyone else — wants Richmond to be the place he moved to; a top city for the arts that is also affordable for the artists making it that way.
“I really just want to live in a place where like all those things continue to be recognized, but the people doing them can live decent, comfortable, fulfilling lives, and not constantly be battling to continue doing that thing,” Sparks said.
The way he sees it, with the crawl of AI, corporate consolidation and the disappearance of physical media, people cannot take creation for granted.
“All you will have is the artists next door, or the band down the street,” Sparks said. So support them so they can continue making those things. When we’re long gone, the only thing people will remember is the art we left behind.”
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