For artist Alexandrea Pangburn, it’s all about the eyes.
“There’s so much language in the eyes,” she said. “I really try to bring my work to life through the eyes of animals.”
Pangburn paints murals of flora and fauna. Her birds, buffalo, bighorn sheep, dogwood blossoms and dahlias can be seen on walls all over Colorado. And in the coming weeks, a new set of Pangburn-painted eyes will appear somewhere in Boulder. Pangburn is one of 21 artists selected for the annual Street Wise Mural Festival, a three-day event of public art and activism taking place in the industrial neighborhood around 47th and Pearl streets. It’s also one of four mural festivals taking place on the Front Range over the next month.
Street Wise was started in 2019 by Leah Brenner Clark as a way to channel her feelings of hopelessness about big social and political issues.
“I consider myself an activist at heart, an artist by nature and an organizer by skill,” Clark said. “Creating something powerful with a group of artists was something I knew I could do, and that could have a lasting impact.”
“Healing Garland” by Grow Love is seen Thursday, Aug. 29 2024, in Boulder. Grow Love painted this wall during last year’s Street Wise festival. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Colorado Sun)
Mural painting has long been a strategy for evoking change and centering community. The most widespread example in the United States is the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Program, a New Deal Project that started in 1935 and funded more than 2,500 murals around the country in post offices, parks, libraries and other public places. The WPA program was largely inspired by the Mexican government’s backing of muralists — notably, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, known as Los Tres Grandes — which helped establish and showcase a national identity in the 1920s.
“If you’re doing it right, the stories being told through the art are representative of the neighborhood,” said Aaron Vega, founder of the Colfax Canvas mural festival in Aurora. “Not that mural fests can do this alone, but they can often shine a light on some of the bigger issues surrounding the arts communities. And if we lose the arts, we lose our soul. I know that’s kind of highfalutin, but I really do believe it.”
If you want to see the artists in action, check out one of the festivals happening on the Front Range over the next month.
Street Wise
Leah Brenner Clark, founder and executive director of Street Wise Arts, estimates the festival has put up around 130 murals over its five years in Boulder. “It’s a faith-based puzzle,” she said, about trying to align the walls, the funding and the artists.
“There are always enough artists,” she added.
This year’s festival features 21 artists selected from a pool of about 250 applicants. Each artist or artist team will create a mural based on the theme of climate action. The lineup includes a mix of local and out-of-state muralists, like Lindee Zimmer, a Tucson-based artist who will work with Boulder Watershed Collective to create a mural about beavers; Bruce Cook, a Haida and Arapaho artist who will be working on his first mural at the Dairy Arts Center; and local artist Kate Fitzpatrick, who describes her work as “magical wildlife art.”
“I use gold, glitter, dots and stars, because the overall theme it’s conveying is an insanely beautiful world,” Fitzpatrick said about her work. “The Street Wise theme is perfect, though, because even though I do wildlife art that’s pretty and happy, let’s not pretend there aren’t very dire things going on as well.”
Colfax Canvas
Sept. 14 | East Colfax Avenue, between Dayton and Florence streets, Aurora | colfaxcanvas.com/
The first Colfax Canvas was held in August 2020, an outdoor experiment headed by Aaron Vega, the self-described “arts consultant” for the city of Aurora and the programming director at the People’s Building, an arts venue and anchor of the Aurora Creative District.
“When we started in 2020 it was in response to this idea that the neighborhood was ‘blighted,’ we kept hearing this word ‘blight,’” Vega said. “The truth is, the neighborhood didn’t look slick, but there were lots of immigrant communities, and small businesses and shops that were doing fine. This (festival) was an attempt to spruce up what we did have so that we could stop hearing that word.”
Since its inception Colfax Canvas has funded 33 new murals in the neighborhood, and created a walking tour for people who want to check out the works on their own time. This year there will be 11 artists painting five new walls.
One of the biggest challenges is finding new places to paint, Vega said. But that challenge has also forced them to be in close communication with the business owners on those blocks.
“I wish we had millions and millions of dollars and we didn’t have to go hunting for walls,” Vega said. “But it also means we have to be much more keyed into what our neighbors want and need. We’ve got street cred now, and ultimately that’s the right currency for East Colfax.”
WeldWalls
Sept. 17-21 | WeldWorks Brewing Company, 508 Eighth Ave., Greeley | weldwalls.com/
Greeley’s first ever mural festival opens Sept. 17 and features seven artists and artist teams hand-selected by Briana Harris, a local artist manager, and Armando Silva, a painter and muralist.
“We really want people from other cities to have an opportunity to chat with artists, and for them to come in and say ‘Oh, Greeley’s awesome,’” Harris said.
For the inaugural festival, Harris and Silva aimed for a mixture of locals, including Betony Coons and the Al Frente Youth Collective, and out-of-towners, like the Denver-based Yazz Atmore and the Worst Crew.
“Visual art is often a very solitary discipline,” Harris said. “Artists don’t get a lot of opportunities to hang and jam and work alongside their peers. Hopefully we are facilitating an exchange among the artists.”
The walls will be painted around a central campus at WeldWorks Brewing Company to create a convenient viewing experience for festival goers. Site viewing is open from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. to align with tap room and restaurant hours. There will also be special programming throughout the week at various locations in Greeley, like an artist panel at the Moxi Theater on Wednesday, Sept. 18, and a creative networking event at the Atlas Theater on Thursday, Sept. 19. The full programming schedule can be found here. All events are free.
Denver Walls
Though it’s new to the scene, Denver Walls is one of the biggest and best-attended festivals based on its inaugural year, which pulled over 150,000 viewers into the RiNo Art District.
Part of the reason is geography. Denver Walls takes place in RiNo, part of the Five Point neighborhood north of downtown Denver, which boasts a well-established street art scene. The festival — at least, geographically — replaces Crush Walls, a long-standing mural festival that pulled out of the area in 2021 amid controversy.
Denver Walls also joined the international World Wide Walls circuit, which started in Hawaii in 2010 and has grown to over 20 cities in North America, Asia, Europe and the Pacific.
Last year’s festival drew in 18 artists from seven countries, including a handful of locals. This year’s festival will feature 14 muralists and two projection experiences, along with a variety of street art events throughout the district.
Fort Collins Mural Project
The Fort Collins Mural Project takes place throughout the month of September, with a volunteer project mural and two rosters of artists painting for one week a piece. The all-volunteer mural wraps up Sept. 7, but there are two upcoming walking tours, Sept. 14 and Sept. 21, and a mural unveiling party Sept. 22.
Future and far away festivals
Babe Walls
Though it’s not in Colorado this year, we have to shout out Babe Walls, an all-women and nonbinary mural festival founded by Alexandrea Pangburn, the Golden-based artist participating in Street Wise. Pangburn worked for the RiNo Art District for a number of years before striking out on her own as a full-time muralist. In 2020 she hosted the first ever Babe Walls festival in Westminster, based on a persistent piece of feedback that she used to get from female artists in RiNo — that they were being overlooked for big festivals. The first two festivals took place in Westminster and Arvada. In 2022 Pangburn took the festival to Standing Rock, North Dakota, and this year it will be held in Chamblee, Georgia.
Fraser Mountain Mural Festival
This year’s festival has already wrapped but marked your calendar for 2025. The only mural festival that includes a cash prize. Located just north of Winter Park in the town of Fraser, artists compete for people’s choice and the artist’s choice awards, of $2,000 and $3,000 respectively. The grand prize winner, selected by the Fraser Public Arts Committee, wins a paid commission working with a local business, and up to $10,000 plus a travel stipend for the project.
KissFist Mural Fest
Tentatively September 2025
Artist Kate Fitzpatrick, also participating in Street Wise this year, is working on getting a new festival off the ground that will focus on the deaf community. Fitzpatrick, who is hearing, grew up with deaf parents, and said that she has noticed the absence of deaf or hard of hearing artists participating in mural festivals. “There are certain access barriers (to the deaf community) that are not difficult to remedy, really, but that are frustrating if you’re deaf,” she said. ”It would be amazing to have a festival that celebrates that culture, pays artists and is open to the people that aren’t a part of the community to learn a little bit more.” The festival’s name, KissFist, is an American Sign Language gesture that means “you really love something,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s a joyful word!” Fitzpatrick is aiming to host the first festival in September 2025.
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Publish date : 2024-09-08 22:40:00
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