Two new murals can be seen in Midland thanks to the Art Seen Festival that took place downtown June 3-4. This is the first year that two new murals have been painted during the festival, and the event plans to continue making its mark on as many buildings as possible.
Some people may wonder, why are murals and public art so important?
“What we know about murals and mural making in communities is not only does it support the sense of place and the sense of belonging to people within their community, but it also offers this opportunity for public art to serve as representation for people and for community,” said Alysia Christy, Art Seen committee member and Director of Community Impact for the Midland Area Community Foundation.
“When you have public art in spaces like large-scale muraling, it allows people to experience a sense of belonging and connection to their community that otherwise they might not have,” said Christy.
Christy says raising up unheard voices of the community is a main focus of mural-making and the Art Seen Festival.
“We (Midland) haven't always been the best at making sure all voices and people and systems are represented, and so the power that mural-making has to allow for that is really great.”
Since its inception in 2021, Art Seen Festival has created a community mural each year, where anyone can participate in painting a part of the wall.
This year's community mural is behind the Little Forks building downtown, right between the two community murals from past festivals. This year’s design centers around the Midland County vision statement: "Together. Forward. Bold. An exceptional place where everyone thrives."
“And we know that not everybody in our community is thriving, but if we can build events and programs and systems that can help support a more diverse representation of our community to actually be thriving, then we're doing the right things,” said Christy.
The mural was designed by local artists Selena Bender, Jazzmyn Benitez and Dacia Parker. The design features origami-style flowers along the bottom that were painted by many community members.
The incorporation of the vision statement by this year’s designers showcases the whole idea of painting murals, which is to connect people to the community.
“I think the artist team has seen the power that a vision statement can have in aligning the community around a sense of shared purpose,” Christy said. “And so if you can literally put that up on a huge wall, it helps to spark additional conversations of how we can all be a part of a shared purpose around a thriving community for all people.”
Christy says participation in the community murals has only grown over the years.
“People have been return painters. Even this year, when they came to paint on the community mural, they would find the little rectangle that they painted in 2021 on the fox mural and say like, 'Look, I did this one.' There's a sense of ownership that you have over what you painted,” she said. “It’s really great to see people get excited about that and to see people excited to return and do it again the following year.”
This was the first year that the Art Seen Festival commissioned a second mural to be painted by a local artist. It’s also the first wall the festival has painted outside of downtown.
The second mural, depicting birds in a wilderness setting, was painted by Kevin Burdick at the UpBeat Music Academy in the Ashman Circle.
Christy says the festival wants to continue expanding out and painting murals across Midland County.
"We will continue to work towards (painting more murals) because the community has been really responsive and really positive about the mural-making that has happened thus far,” she said.
Christy says she isn’t worried about finding new spaces for murals.
“I can tell you some business owners have already come and kind of reached out and said ‘Hey, what does it take to be a potential wall for you?’ And so I do trust that we'll have space in the future.”