Drawn to drawings

(Editor’s note: “Keep Austin weird” is the official slogan of the rapidly growing, trendsetting city. Here are reports on two pieces of the Austin lifestyle.)

AUSTIN, Texas—On a warm winter evening recently, about 80 young men and women waited in a line outside a North Austin restaurant for the chance to drink beer, eat pizza, and … color.

Pinthouse Pizza and coloring book publisher MindCanvis put on the event, which drew 2,000 RSVPs to a Facebook post promoting it. The restaurant’s general manager, John Davis, said at least 700 people showed up—and 200 more overflowed to the sandwich shop next door.

The outside crowd was so big the fire marshal arrived to limit it. Davis said he was surprised by the turnout: “We never knew that adult coloring was such a big thing.”

Well, it is. Over the past five years adult coloring has grown in popularity. The books appear on Amazon’s hourly bestseller book list, libraries nationwide host adult coloring programs, and last year three coloring books by one artist, Johanna Basford, sold about 1 million copies. A Barnes & Noble store in Austin devotes two 10-foot sections to coloring books with themes ranging from flowers to detailed geometrics and from the Bible to “inspiring totem animals.”

Observers and users offer diverse reasons for coloring’s popularity among adults. Enrique Macias, co-founder of MindCanvis, calls adult coloring “a therapeutic practice” that people often do alone “to decompress and manage stress”: After working on computers, they want to disconnect from technology and engage in tactile things. But at the Barnes & Noble, graphic illustrator Tom said he and his friends like to drink whiskey, watch The X-Files, and enjoy “coloring in someone else’s lines. It’s like a one-sided collaboration.”

Some coloring fans don’t want to be alone. Myra Whisnand, 32, sat with her aunt, Patti Clark, 64, at one of the long tables inside Pinthouse. Clark, an exercise fanatic who first turned to coloring to maintain her sanity while recovering from knee surgery, was putting finishing touches on her patriotic Willie Nelson page. Whisnand focused on her teal and magenta peacock. For them the night was a chance to do something together. “Man, I’m visiting my niece and get to color in the same evening. It doesn’t get any better than that,” Clark said.

Megan Robertson, 23, was coloring at the Austin event. For her, coloring is “connecting to the inner child.” Bridget, 22, said coloring is “a meditation kind of thing—like yoga.” Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, told The New Yorker that some adults use activities like coloring to avoid confronting adult responsibilities and obligations: “The coloring book is an artifact of a broader cultural shift. And that cultural shift is a bad thing.”

MEANWHILE, SOUTH OF THE RIVER that runs through Austin, others were writing on the side of a building turned into a 25-foot-high, 30-foot-long chalkboard known as a “Before I Die” wall. Comments one day ranged from “see my children prosper” and “write a book” to many travel-related dreams such as “trip to the jungle.” One frequent comment: “Swimming with dolphins.” Neighbors walking by the wall said its use creates a sense of community. When people write inappropriate comments, residents take it upon themselves to erase or edit the remarks. Rain washes off comments, but the wall doesn’t stay blank for long.

Before I Die walls originated with New Orleans artist Candy Chang, who felt lonely when a motherlike figure and dear friend, Joan, died unexpectedly in 2009. Thinking a lot about death, she felt gratitude for life and in 2011 received permission to put up a large chalkboard on the side of an abandoned building in her neighborhood. She stenciled on the top of the board “Before I die …” with lots of empty blanks. By the end of the first day it was filled: “Before I die … I want to be tried for piracy … straddle the international date line … sing for millions … plant a tree … live off the grid … hold her one more time … be someone’s cavalry … be completely myself.”

Before I Die walls are now a worldwide phenomenon, with more than 1,000 raised so far: Chang’s book Before I Die documents many of them in cities from Mexico City to Almaty, Kazakhstan, to Tehran, Iran, and most U.S. states. On the Austin wall one person wrote, “Before I die I want to forget what it feels like to take a life.” Before I Die walls let people publicly but anonymously express superficial and deep feelings.

The only complaint in Austin: The wall sometimes brings late-night partiers, but Tom Welch, whose house faces the wall, calls that a small price to pay for the fun of watching so many people visit it and write clever comments. Question: How might Christians use this concept to build community or raise questions worth pondering?

—Melinda Taylor, Naomi Inman, Joseph McCoy, and Joe Kesler are graduates of the World Journalism Institute mid-career course