Competition is fierce for Catlanta’s public art, then the winners purr

Artist Rory Hawkins, better known as Catlanta, has elevated his three-legged, visually pared-down cat icon into the pantheon of Atlanta’s best-loved street art symbols. He turns art into a participatory sport by dropping small, cat-themed artworks called kittens in unexpected public places for members of the public to take. To lead would-be collectors to the spot, he leaves online clues for treasure hunters to follow the last Friday of every month.

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

In addition to his public-facing art, Hawkins maintains a schedule of fine art and corporate commissions and is also one of Atlanta’s favorite muralists, sometimes even sneaking cats into non-cat-themed murals. Some of Hawkins’ recent work includes animal-themed murals at Remedy, a veterinary facility in East Lake, and at Fulton County Animal Services in Bankhead. He has been a featured artist for OuterSpace Project; Stacks Squares; Forward, Warrior!! and Burnin’ Bridges in Chattanooga. In April, he had a solo show at ABV Gallery.

Working for PAWS Atlanta — an animal rescue organization — while studying art at Georgia State University, Hawkins adopted cats and developed his love for them. Encouraged by his school friends who admired his cat doodles, he began painting them in 2011 as less-than-legal street art on freeway underpasses and abandoned properties.

Hawkins describes what came next: “I began to see them being shared online by documenters of the local street art and graffiti scene. Seeing that others were drawn to the character as well led me to keep painting it.” When neighborhood associations became upset about the spray-painted cats appearing in their districts, he transitioned to less destructive means for creating his work.

“As a nearly lifelong resident of the metro area,” Hawkins continues, “there are still places I’m discovering and learning about to this day, and it’s just fun to encourage others to go out and find these spots while hunting for a three-legged cat painting.”

Credit: Courtesy of Rory Hawkins via Instagram

Credit: Courtesy of Rory Hawkins via Instagram

I had the good fortune to accompany Catlanta on two of his kitten drops. The afternoon began in Hawkins’ compact studio at MINT, a block from the West End MARTA station. The first thing that caught my eye was an abstract painting peppered with distorted cat elements that captured the transition in Hawkins’ life caused by the birth of his now-8-month-old daughter. In the artist’s words: “I don’t think that artist is the most stable career, but I want to provide that stable path for her, so the past couple of months have been back and forth on how I can make this work and still be present and still be the artist that I want to be.”

Hawkins’ kitten-making process starts in the studio with a digitally created image printed on paper. Graphite on the back of the paper transfers the image onto wood when traced with a pen. Next the artist paints the wood, then takes it home to cut the profile on a scroll saw in his basement. Finishing touches are applied back in the studio.

The shapes of the kittens are consistent, but each kitten’s content is unique. Catlanta’s kitten themes are inspired by current events, suggestions from social media followers, popular culture and sometimes the drop locations themselves. In late May, when Atlanta’s Civil War-era water pipes burst, the next dropped kitten was adorned with rusty pipes.

Hawkins keeps a map of all his drops so he can spread them out across the city as much as possible.

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

This month, the two hidden treasures were inspired by the simultaneous emergence of 13- and 17-year cicadas. (The last time this happened was in 1802, when Thomas Jefferson was president.) One kitten is a cicada nymph and the other is a cicada adult. The day before the drops, Hawkins posted an Instagram story with a parody of an entomological cicada emergence map hinting at the locations for the drops.

As we get into Hawkins’ car, he still has not disclosed the first drop site to me. With a sly grin, he poses a challenge: “You’re Mr. Atlanta Street Art Map [a reference to the website I founded in 2017] — do you know of any cicada murals in town?” I was completely stumped.

Hawkins explained that he had met Atlanta artist Erin Wicker at a chalk art event and that she was really into cicadas. So when he decided to make cicadas the theme for this drop, he looked up Wicker’s murals. Sure enough, Wicker’s mural at Artist Cove, a collection of artist studios that convert to storefronts at the Beacon on the Beltline in Grant Park, contained a cicada.

After 15 minutes, the black Mazda narrowly beats out the gray Chevy, and Breanna from Grant Park leaps out to grab the prize. This was her first kitten find. “I have notifications on for his stories and posts,” exclaims Breanna, who attended Hawkins’ solo show in April. “I’ve tried to hunt for it three to five times but every time it was already gone. I have two cats and I have cats tattooed on me. I’m a big cat-art fan and cat fan!”

Driving to the second drop, Catlanta reveals that our next destination is Utoy Cemetery in southwest Atlanta’s Venetian Hills neighborhood. “I figured it’s kinda on-brand to have something emerging from being buried,” says the artist with another sly grin.

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

Credit: Photo by Arthur Rudick

We pull up to the first drop location. Catlanta attaches the kitten to a bike rack in front of Wicker’s mural with a magnet and posts the drop notification to Instagram, Facebook and X, formerly Twitter. To maintain an aura of mystery, Hawkins doesn’t typically stay for the kitten to be found, so I agree to meet him at his car after the find.

As we drive, Hawkins shares some of the thinking behind his kitten drops: “With so much development, character has changed or places have closed down. In some ways, some of these cats are memories for people of places that no longer exist. I think that Atlanta has lost a little bit of its character, a little bit of its uniqueness, but I think that passion is still there and I think the creative energy is still there. It’s just harder to find.”

We arrive at the graveyard, Hawkins attaches the kitten to the historic landmark plaque and the second drop notification goes out.

Credit: Photos by Arthur Rudick

Credit: Photos by Arthur Rudick

Within 10 minutes, Kelly, who describes herself as a Catlanta superfan, pulls up outside the fence. Rather than wasting time walking 50 feet to the entry gate, Kelly vaults over the chain-link fence, losing a shoe in the process, and nabs the artwork. Tipped off by Rory’s clue map the day before, she camped out at her partner’s house in the Pittsburgh neighborhood to wait for the drop notification posts because Pittsburgh is closer to the drop locations than her Decatur home. This is the second kitten Kelly has won in Catlanta’s regular Atlanta drops. She also snagged them in multi-kitten festival drops at Emory University and at the M2R TrailFest in Marietta.

As Hawkins drives me back to his studio to wrap up the day, I realize that his goal of encouraging people to explore new places had been accomplished — not just for the kitten hunters but for myself as well. Otherwise, I would never have thought to explore the fascinating 19th century tombstones of the Utoy Cemetery. I came away from the afternoon not just with a peek into a uniquely Atlanta street artist but also with a memorable experience and a history lesson about the place I call home.

To see Catlanta’s kitten drop notifications, you can follow him on Instagram @catlanta.

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Arthur Rudick created the Atlanta Street Art Map in 2017 after retiring from a successful career as an engineer with Eastman Kodak and the Coca-Cola Company. His first experience of art was seeing an Alexander Calder mobile as a child in the Pittsburgh airport. Rudick is ArtsATL’s street art expert and a regular contributor.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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