CARMEL -- Window gazing in Carmel's Arts & Design District can be pleasing to the eye -- thanks to the paintings in the galleries and the artistic decorations in the design stores.
But chances are, you will do a double-take if you peer inside the window of Fat Atom Internet Marketing, a small firm at 12 W. Main St.

A giant mural -- loud, colorful images spray-painted on a wall inside -- causes many pedestrians to slow down for a look. And then another.

"We were new to the district (last year) and we didn't want to just come in as another retail shop," said Todd Muffley, president of the firm.

"We wanted people to walk by and take a second look. And when they walk by at night, we leave the lights on for them." If it looks like graffiti, well, it is.

Colorful, swirly images make it difficult, but not impossible, to make out the image of a robot, an outer-space-like background with a large atom floating like a planet.

 The only direction given to the artists: "We wanted something retro-future." The rest was up to Fab Crew artists Benjamin Long and Dan Thompson, who designed and spray-painted the image.

 The duo, who live in Indianapolis, work as commercial artists by day and "taggers" by night. They've done more than 50 murals for clients like Muffley and are responsible for hundreds of personal graffiti images over the years -- some of which might border on being illegal.

 For Fat Atom, the spray-painted wall looks like it belongs to a company that is laid back, where workers come in their shorts and sandals to do their work. "That's the image we want," said Muffley, who hired the Fab Crew duo to spray-paint the wall -- and then brought them back a few months ago to do even more on the second floor.

"Too often, people will assume you're competent if you have on a suit and a tie, but assume you are not if you have a double-studded earring and a pierced tongue.

We want to be judged by what we do." His employees sit upstairs in a room called "the factory" in areas named for nuclear disasters (Chernobyl, 3 Mile), clustered near Fab Crew images painted on walls that used to be boring blue. "It's not distracting. You get used to it," said Steven Musngi, whose desk sits right under a female robot who appears ready to strike him with a fiery atom.

 So who are these artists who come in without a blueprint, armed with gloves and spray cans?

They've painted for Indianapolis homeowners and clients like Indy's Best Pizza, Midtown Music and Red Bull, though they've also spent the past 10 years perfecting their tags on walls and freight train cars -- for which they are not paid. In July, they were chosen to transform a concrete wall a mile north of Garfield Park in Indianapolis -- one of the Super Bowl-related projects designed to show off the city's artistic community.

The Arts Council of Indianapolis recruited 35 artists to help beautify the city in its first mural program in decades, known as "46 by XLVI." FAB Crew's Long says when they appealed to the Arts Council -- their first-ever collaboration with the city -- they did not disclose their graffiti tag names. "It's stressful, trying to decide what to say, who to say it to, when to share something that you've done that you're excited about, when to keep it to yourself," Thompson said.

The fears are legitimate. Aerosol artists across the nation have been arrested for their past flirtations with graffiti, even years after getting commissioned work. The FAB Crew twosome started painting their 46 by XLVI mural on Oct. 10. They want to stay local and continue representing the city through other commissioned murals, but they also dream of traveling to New York and Europe -- and seeing Indianapolis mentioned in "The History of American Graffiti." "There are some people I know who wouldn't like to hear that, because they would have a different perception, like, 'Well, why would you do that if you can get paid to do it now?'" Long said. "I'm like, 'Well, it's called passion.'"

Call Star reporter Dan McFeely at (317) 444-6253.
Original story.