44The Wall That Swears It's Nothing
“Wildflowers I” by Naomi Canale with Bradley Settles and Rianna Alvarado, 2023 · Creative Waco’s ARTprenticeship · at Hotel Herringbone, 319 S 4th Street · the “Nothing to See Here” QR wall above is not on record · know who painted it? Tell us.MURAL
A two-story QR code that promises there's nothing to see. It is lying, and it knows it.
On the black steel upper deck of Hotel Herringbone — the shipping-container boutique hotel whose other wall you'll meet at the next stop — somebody painted an enormous, fully scannable QR code with a smiley face in the middle and a promise underneath: NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Then, in small handwritten cursive, one more word: seriously.
This is, of course, the oldest trick in the book. Nothing makes a human being reach for a phone faster than a wall telling them not to bother. The smiley's eyes are X's, which is how the wall lets you know it has watched this happen hundreds of times and made peace with it. What does it link to? That's between you and the wall — a mural with a punchline you have to scan to earn. Meanwhile the brick below refuses to play along: white wildflowers climb the whole base of the building, being extravagantly, unapologetically something.
Those are Wildflowers I — mallow poppies against native grasses, painted in 2023 by Naomi Canale with Bradley Settles and Rianna Alvarado and the teenage crew of Creative Waco's ARTprenticeship, with mentors RJ Jones, Dominic Villa and Elvia Leyva. Texas wildflowers as endurance and renewal, on a building that acknowledges the Wi'iko people and the Blackland Prairie that were here before any of downtown was.