A special Blink-related art piece will be unveiled Tuesday, Oct. 13, when an iconic Over-the-Rhine building begins demolition.
Miami-based artist Douglas Hoekzema, also known as HOXXOH, and his team spray-painted the entire interior of the former Crossroad Health Center at the corner of East Liberty and Vine streets.
The project, called Downpour, was completed over the last few days using 130 gallons of paint shot onto every square inch of the clinic via a series of garden sprinklers. It's the artist's first full-scale interior.
"I don't even know how to describe what we just did," Hoekzema told The Enquirer on an Oct. 8 visit to the site, "but the concept is that the reveal of the work is on the demolition. I kind of thought of it as they'd be cutting
it (up) as a layered cake."
Passersby will get a glimpse of HOXXOH's interior mural as the building goes down, piece by piece. O'Rourke Wrecking Company is expected to lead demolition, and Agar, the experiential marketing agency that helps produce Blink, will follow it for content.
HOXXOH painted a Blink piece in 2024
This is Hoekzema's third art piece in Cincinnati. He also participated in the last edition of Blink when he painted the dueling Bengal tigers on the 41 W. McMicken St. building in northern Over-the-Rhine.
"This is the coolest public art event I've ever been to and the most inclusive art event," he said. "You don't even need to know anything about art."
Hoekzema was planning to visit Blink this weekend when Agar partner and Blink-co-founder Andrew Salzbrun called him up for this last-minute project.
Though it's not an official work in Blink this year, Salzbrun considers it one of his agency's most unique installations.
"Part of what makes Blink special is we can do our great, traditional art forms but also take some risks," he said, "and do some things that, with a wide audience, can be appreciated at a grand scale. This one we took on a flyer and hope we get something great out of it. It's unlike anything we've ever done before."
Because the artwork is largely hidden to the public, Agar plans to document the demolition as excavators reveal new layers of the interior.
"Our content team will be watching every brick fall on this," Salzbrun said. "The real asset at the end of this is going to be the content that's pulled out of it."
Hoekzema worked with a team of artists to execute Downpour including Wyatt Richards, CamNut, Max Kauffman, Brandon Opalka, Anthony BirdSeed, Wayne Horse, Solfes and Atomik.
He also embraced Cincinnati's DIY skate culture by inviting local skaters to build ramps and temporarily convert parts of the building into a skate park for a video project expected to be released in the coming months.
"There's probably a dozen different graffiti artists adding elements to the building inside and outside," Hoekzema said. "Graffiti grows."
Why the OTR landmark is slated for demolition
The old Crossroad Health Center at 5 E. Liberty St. is one of Over-the-Rhine's most recognizable modern structures. Built in 1988, it features a bright and colorful graphic mural from Blink Cincinnati 2024 by Atlanta artist Wolfdog.
Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., or 3CDC, bought the property in spring 2025. At the time, health center staff were already preparing tomove into a new $16 million expanded facility near Findlay Market that opened earlier this year.
Signs of life from the clinic still exist in the abandoned building: Desk chairs, whiteboards scribbled with medical notes, scales, and dentistry machines can be found throughout the maze of rooms − all now sprayed with paint.
The site is earmarked for a future parking lot.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 'Unlike anything we've done': Final Blink art in doomed OTR building
