DALLAS (1080 KRLD)- Dallas has a fascinating work of art on the side of a building downtown, that no one has seen in the last 15 years. The artist Wyland is famous for painting seascapes on the sides of buildings all over the world. He calls them his "Whaling Walls".
He painted one of them here on the back of the building at 505 N. Akard and Field, in 1999.
But for the last 15 years, it's been covered up by ads.
With the Coronavirus pandemic, the billboard company had to take those ads down, and reveal the mural underneath.
Wyland says he just found out about the situation a few weeks ago. He's celebrating the fact that his gigantic mural is back for the public to see for the first time since 2005.
Wyland looked back at the days when he came to Dallas to paint the mural. He says he saw that open space on the side of the building, and thought that it needed to have humpback whales on it.
He had his friend, former Dallas Cowboy Herschel Walker, there as he and his crew painted the mural. Plano's JC Penney facilitated the whole project in cooperation with the city of Dallas.
Wyland says the covering up of art is a national problem, but he points to a federal law that protects public art. That's called the "Visual Artists' Rights Act". He says artists have sued and won millions of dollars against those that would try to destroy public art.
Wyland also says if he can get some assurances from Dallas city leaders that the covering up won't happen again and once the pandemic is over, he wants to come back to the Whaling Wall mural in downtown Dallas to make it fresh and new, and covered with a clear coat to let it last.