Allison Montroy
amontroy@mustangdaily.net
Bubblegum alley is so last year.
Downtown San Luis Obispo has a new, less smelly, alleyway community art project: “Tie Alley.”
The alley itself is easy to miss — it’s just a small walkway wedged in between two adobe and brick buildings along Chorro Street. But the colorful assortment of hundreds of neckties strung up all along the alley catches the eyes of many passers-by.
The imaginative mind behind Tie Alley, local artist Lynn Hessler, said the alleyway art is a “random act of cheerfulness” that “just created itself.”
“It’s a pretty innocent story,” Hessler said. “I was collecting ties to make my friend’s daughter a skirt, and I hung the ties to air out on the clothesline. I became so enchanted by them hanging that I never took them down, and Tie Alley was born.”
For about a year, Hessler has been picking up ties at thrift stores to add to the collection, which is actually the walkway to her home. She said people have brought ties to add to the clothesline, and encourages visitors to take any ties they like.
One time, Hessler said, a man came into the alley and told her he wears ties when he goes to church at the Mission across the street — so she told him to take three ties with him, and wouldn’t let him pay for them.
“When I said that, well, he just about fainted,” Hessler said. “But I like that the alley has a ‘pay it forward’ mentality. One time, I came home and someone had thrown a big plastic bag full of ties over my gate. People will ask if I’m selling the ties, and I tell them they’re for everyone. Sometimes people will take a tie and leave something else behind, like a coupon. It just creates a great energy.”
She claims the “energy” of the alley comes from the history behind the location. Hessler said the block on Chorro Street between Monterey and Palm streets — near where Chinatown is today — was once somewhat of a “red light district” in San Luis Obispo’s early days, as discovered in the 2012 excavation of the 800 block of Palm Street.
Archeologists found drinking glasses, opium bottles, Chinese coins and mission-era artifacts in the dig site near Tie Alley.
“Imagine,” Hessler said, “what you would find if you dug under this alley, under these buildings. There’s just so much energy here. It’s an enchanting place.”
Hessler herself is enchanting. The artist likes to spend time in the alley, her shoulders draped with new ties, some matching her red hair, other ties matching her blue tie-dye dress as she thinks of new ways to add to the gallery of men’s clothing. Hessler is happy to share the story of her art with any visitor to the alley, and her dragonfly earrings wave wildly when she enthuses about the people she’s met.
“Three kinds of people walk by here,” Hessler said, proceeding to act out each one. “The ones that go by fast and keep their heads down. The ones that will walk, pause, look into the alley and keep walking. And then there’s the ones that stop and come in, going ‘oohh look.'”
One of the latter category stopped by Tie Alley while Hessler was adding some new ties.
Hessler was so excited to meet Jana Favalor and her friend that she took them on a tour of the entire block — including her art studio above the alley.
Favalor had been to the alley before and wanted to show her friend the eclectic find in the heart of town.
“I had taken a picture (of Tie Alley) and put it on Facebook and someone said it was great that it was something other than Bubblegum Alley,” Favaflor said.
Hessler’s neighbors tell her that many people stop by the alley on days when she is not home and that they hear many compliments about the art project.
“Well, we just think it’s tie-riffic,” Alex Gough of Adobe Realty, a neighboring business, said.
Though, some people are just plain baffled by the idea.
“Sometimes people look at me like I’m crazy, and say, Why are you doing this?’” Hessler said. “But I’m an artist; I do a lot of crazy stuff.”
As an artist, Hessler strives to create “green graffiti” — an art form that “makes an artistic statement without harming anything.”
She used the entry sign to Tie Alley as an example: The adobe wall of the adjacent building is marked “Tie Alley” with blue painter’s tape, which, Hessler said, can easily be taken down without causing damage to the building.
She also takes ties and turns them into handles for her handmade tote bags, and said she likes to focus on “green art products,” such as the skirt she was originally planning to use the ties for.
“Who knows,” Hessler said, “maybe my friend’s daughter will get a skirt one day.”