The Bigger Picture

When Mike McPuff applied for the Fort Collins Mural Project in 2017, he had never painted a mural before. He had spent several years as a graphic designer, but his preferred medium was spray paint. With nothing in his portfolio to help him pitch a mural, Lindee Zimmer, founder of the nonprofit, gave him a chance.

Now McPuff is a seasoned muralist with more than a dozen murals in Fort Collins and several others across Colorado as well as other states. Though he has never left the country, he recently got his passport and hopes that his murals will take him around the world. For now, though, he’s focused on a new project in his hometown.

McPuff is one of a dozen Fort Collins artists selected to partake in the nonprofit’s first-ever gateway mural—a mural welcoming residents and visitors to the city—which will be located at the corner of Jefferson and Pine streets on the west side of Millennium Gallery of Living Art. The location was chosen because of its proximity to the River District, the area northeast of Old Town Square that includes businesses along Linden Avenue and Jefferson, Linden and Willow streets.

“It’s a tie-in space between Old Town and the River District and will be a good way to draw pedestrian traffic to the businesses there,” says Jess Bean, executive director of the Fort Collins Mural Project. “I hope it’s a place where people stop, commune, take photos and share [the mural] with people who are outside of our community as well. It’s designed with tourism in mind.”

The gallery’s huge, white wall has been coveted by muralists for years, Bean says, so rather than assigning one muralist to the wall, the board decided that it would be the perfect spot for their first collaborative piece.

“Every working muralist in town has looked at that wall and been like, ‘I want to paint that.’ It’s just that perfect piece of canvas calling everybody’s name,” she says.

A new structure

In past years, the Fort Collins Mural Project placed artists at different locations all over the city to create their own works of art. Each artist had the freedom to create whatever they wanted, as long as their mural was family friendly. As a result, more than a dozen new murals were painted across Fort Collins every year, many of them by local artists who, like McPuff, were new to murals before joining the project and gained recognition because of it.

Last year, the nonprofit received grant funding that allowed them to offer workshops and artist talks in addition to the project, which got their wheels turning when it came time to plan for this season.

“We really loved being able to give back to the community in a different way, so we decided to start doing a collaborative year and alternate that with a regular mural festival type of year moving forward,” Bean says.

The goal of the new model is to encourage collaboration between established and emerging muralists and create opportunities for them to network, mentor and learn from each other. It’s also a chance for them to get their hands on highly sought-after spaces, like Millenium’s coveted wall.

“The mural project has grown into this community of people who really care about the scene, so I’m excited to see what [this new project] will look like,” McPuff says. “I do think I have advice that could help [emerging muralists], but vice versa, I’m always learning from new people too.”

Themes of Fort Collins

The gateway mural was inspired by vintage greeting cards, with retro script and chunky letters that will say, “Greetings from Fort Collins, Colorado.” Each artist will paint one letter in “Fort Collins,” (including the comma), and volunteers and board members will paint the background the week before they arrive. The public is invited to stop by and observe the project over the course of its three weeks.

Artists will be split into two groups, each with one week to complete their letter, but ideas have been swirling in their heads for months. Each artist received a different theme, spanning from education to bike culture to the Cache la Poudre River.

McPuff was given the letter “S” with a theme of “the arts.” His concept involves many different aspects of the local art scene, including pottery, painting and dance. He plans to overlap the different elements so that when the viewer looks at the letter, they see a pattern.

“I have this style I call the ‘fiasco’ style; I cover every inch of the canvas, and the more you look at it, you’ll notice stuff hidden in there,” he says. “Maybe two shapes overlap, and the overlapping creates a whole different shape inside of it, like a different piece of imagery.”

All of the themes represent different aspects of Fort Collins, Bean says. In a city so dynamic, narrowing down the themes to the ones that best represent the area took some serious consideration.

“Instead of just ‘agriculture,’ it’s ‘human history of agriculture’ because there’s a whole story there that needs to be told,” Bean says. “Instead of just ‘breweries,’ it’s the culture around beer. We want to see these little stories being told within the art that speak to the people here.”

Since there are specific themes this year, and the mural is contracted for much longer than previous years, artists will earn $25 per square foot. In normal years, artists make $7.50 per square foot, which is tied for the highest paid mural festival in the state, Bean says.

Bean and the other board members will be available during the project to help artists project their images on the wall. They’ll bring snacks and words of encouragement, and they welcome the public to do the same.

“People get nervous approaching muralists, but we’re public artists, so we’re used to entertaining the public at the same time,” Bean says. “Stop by, and if you want to bring a six-pack of soda for them, that’s great too.”

Encouraging diversity

Part of the nonprofit’s mission is to provide opportunities for the LGBTQIA+ community, people of color and emerging muralists to make a name for themselves in the local art scene. Every year, the board selects a combination of established and emerging muralists of different backgrounds to participate in the project.

“Representation matters so much to the mental health of the local society, so it’s really great to add representation to our walls in places where you don’t have to pay or wait for open hours to go see it,” Bean says.

That representation applies not only to the artists who are chosen for the project but the subject matter as well. For this year’s project, the second “L” will depict the theme, “BIPOC heritage.” Fort Collins artist Imani Samuel has big plans for the letter. It will be her first mural.

“As a Black person myself, being here in Fort Collins…when other Black people or people of color come here, they’re like, ‘Oh wow, other Black people! I didn’t know you guys were here,’” Samuel says. “I want to show that while we may not be a big population, we have been putting down roots in Fort Collins for a while.”

Samuel plans to incorporate different elements of the families who called Fort Collins home in the late 1800s and early 1900s by showcasing Black churchgoers, barbershop patrons and homesteaders as well as the Hispanic sugar beet workers who helped establish the area’s agricultural roots.

“Food is a big part of bringing communities together, so I want to incorporate at least a few of those crop or food elements,” Samuel says. “Hair is such a big part of the BIPOC community, so I want to bring that in as well.”

Samuel’s preferred medium is gouache, a kind of paint that blends the opacity of acrylic and the transparency of watercolor, she says. Her work is colorful and whimsical, and she hopes to bring that same vibrancy to her representation of BIPOC heritage on the wall.

Artist collaboration

The Fort Collins Mural Project’s plan to alternate between collaborative years and their regular, spaced-out structure will allow for more synergy between emerging muralists like Samuel and established muralists like McPuff. Though each artist was assigned different subject matter this year, the experience of sharing a wall creates invaluable learning opportunities for them.

“I love to learn new things, so I think this will be a really good opportunity for myself and others to get out of our comfort zones and explore a new way of doing things,” Samuel says. “If you work in smaller mediums—I work with paper and canvas—it will be really cool to branch out and see what this looks like scaled up.”

Established muralists will get just as much out of the project as artists who are new to murals, Bean says. They’ll have the chance to step into a mentor role and be inspired by the new energy onsite.

“When the more established artists get to interact with the emerging muralists, they come out rejuvenated and often say, ‘That pumped me up again for doing murals because I was getting tired,’” Bean says. “It’s hard work.”

 

Gateway Mural Timeline

Sept. 1-7 – Volunteers paint the background

Sept. 8-14 – First half of artists paint their letters

Sept. 15-21 – Second half of artists paint their letters

Sept. 22 – Unveiling celebration takes place from 3-6 p.m. in the lot adjacent to Millennium Gallery of Living Art

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WeldWalls: A New Mural Festival in Northern Colorado

The Greeley art scene is also testing the waters with an exciting new project. WeldWalls, the city’s inaugural mural festival, is set to take place from Sept. 17-21 at WeldWerks Brewing Co. and will bring together teams of artists to create seven new murals on the brewery’s walls.

Renowned muralist Armando Silva and his manager, musician Briana Harris, are organizing the festival. The Greeley creatives have worked together for years and want to elevate the art scene and attract more people to see what’s happening on their home turf.

“We’re stoked to bring the festival format to Greeley and provide some of that cultural exchange between our local art community and artists coming from other communities around the region,” Harris says.

She and Silva hand-picked the artists participating in this year’s festival and gave them creative freedom to develop their own ideas within the theme, “the new West.” The idea is that the murals will pay tribute to the history of the area and how it’s changed over the years.

The festival will be free and open to the public and will include artist talks, an unveiling event and possible collaborations with downtown businesses. Festival programming and a list of participating artists are available on the WeldWalls site.

“The idea was, ‘build it and they will come,’” Silva says. “We were both like, ‘This is our community, our backyard, and this would be cool for us to do.’ Once this wraps up, we’ll have a nice pilot episode to see if we can make more episodes for the season moving forward.”