Sometimes inspiration strikes, connecting people and communities.

When property owners participate in ArtsFest Montana, they don’t get to choose the mural that will be installed on their building.

The artists are matched with walls depending on their styles and skills with large walls.

Curator Cameron Moberg said that some artists paint something that falls within their normal body of work, but others draw inspiration from the property owner or business within those walls.

That was the case this summer for Max Sansing who painted a mural on the back of the Special Olympics Montana building downtown.

Shortly after arriving in Great Falls in mid-August, Sansing went to meet with some of the athletes and staff.

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Rhonda McCarty, Special Olympics Montana CEO, said they are a volunteer driven organization that values community.

She said that Sansing uses the flame in many of his murals, representing the endurance of humanity, and that Special Olympics also draws on the flame with the law enforcement torch run.

“It just went together so beautifully,” McCarty said. “We love the project, we love the whole project from year to year and love seeing the murals downtown is creates such vibrancy across our community.”

Sue Hill works at Special Olympics Montana and her daughter, Jenny, is a Special Olympics athlete.

She said that Special Olympics is a big part of the athletes lives and “any time they get to share it with somebody, it just brings them a lot of joy.”

Hill said that they love the completed mural and invited local Special Olympics athletes to take photos together in front of the mural.

“They were in awe, they just love it,” Hill said.

She said she noticed a cross country team in the alley taking photos with the mural since it’s been completed and thought it “was kind of special, that they made that connection.”

Hill said one of her takeaways was the determination Sansing depicted in the athlete’s face in the mural.

“I see that same determination in Special Olympics athletes and I just love that he captured that,” she said.

In a conversation with Sansing, he talked about “the emotional transaction and the spirit between the volunteers and the athletes,” Hill said.

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Sansing said he enjoyed meeting the Special Olympics crew.

“I was listening, taking in everything, trying to find parallels with my artistic ethos and their organization,” he said. “There’s always a balance between what they want to see and my style.”

He found that overlap with the flame.

Of the flame, Sansing said it’s a “power symbol, I think it represents humanity,” and he saw that in speaking with the athletes and volunteers.

The Chicago native gets inspiration from all over and works to add things into a mural without it becoming a jumbled mess.

For his Great Falls mural, he said he was able to use a different color combination that he typically uses and broke from his normal use of cherry blossoms and incorporated a bitterroot.

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Sansing said that murals can’t necessarily fix problems in a community, but said of the Great Falls community that “they appreciate the stakes and the impact to the area. They say this is awesome to see what’s happening.

The community was thankful and grateful for the artists to be in Great Falls and Sansing said, “I’m grateful and thankful to be here. Thanks for letting me get down in the freedom of my creativity.”

Artists come from across the globe for the Great Falls mural festival, but incorporates Montana artists.

This year, the festival included Rilie Tane of Billings.

She said that most of the time she’s doing contract work and doesn’t get to chose what she paints.

For the mural festival, she had freedom to choose and “I was excited to try to put my look of wood burning” on the back of the building at the corner of Central Avenue and 5th Street, in the alley behind Stockman Bank.

After painting a buffalo in Billings last year, she reached out to the Downtown Great Falls Association because she knew there was a spray painting class as part of the mural festival.

She said the DGFA put her in touch with Moberg and she was invited to participate in this year’s festival, a first for her.

Tane said she’s always done art as a hobby and growing up, her mother and grandmother painted and drew, “so that’s what started everything.”

She saw someone do woodburning and decided to try that too.

Tane said she loves the creative freedom of the festival and “how involved and supportive the community is, that’s awesome, and I like having a group of other artists to talk to at the end of the day.”

During the festival, she wasn’t going to do a shadow on her owl, but Moberg and Fasm gave her some advice, “they’ve taught me a lot,” she said.

“I think it’s a big deal,” she said of public art, “you can tell, even the homeless people who walk by, it makes them happy too. It makes the area feel safe.”

Tane said she’d been to Great Falls when she was younger for sports and “it feels safer now.”

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The owl she painted is a larger than life version of one of her wood burning pieces and she said people stopped by to talk to her while she was painting and many took photos.

To the Great Falls community, “thank you for being so welcoming and supportive.”

It was a return trip to Great Falls for Fasm and his fourth mural festival here.

He painted on the side wall of the Runway Salon on the 700 block of Central Avenue.

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In past years, he’s largely painted animals such as the tiger on the side of Speaking Socially and the bear across from the Stockman Bank drive through on 5th Street.

This year, he “thought about what an 80s mural in Great Falls would have looked like.”

He’s been going more 80s design, pushing color and style. He’d considered using a BMX bike in the design but after some conversation with locals decided a wake border would be a better fit for the river community.

From Modesto, Calif., Fasm has been painting murals for about 30 years.

He was always drawing, but as a freshman in high school started tagging. He was always drawing comic book type characters and getting more detailed in his drawings when he was seeing more elaborate murals and realized “oh this is what I want to do, put these two things together.”

Fasm and Moberg have been friends for years and he’s been painting in mural festivals all over.

“I want to do my style and nowadays build something into my style and develop it. When coming here, I want to create something unique that people will know that this is for them, to kind of stretch them but also know that this is for them,” he said of painting in Great Falls.

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It’s a fun experience in Great Falls where the artists get to spend a lot of time together.

“As an artist, I don’t always get feedback and ideas and the sharing of techniques,” Fasm said.

The Great Falls festival has also grown and is a high caliber art event.

“More and more people are interested in it and know what’s going on,” he said he’s noticed over his years returning to Great Falls for the festival.

For the 2023 festival, 12 new murals were installed around the downtown.

The festival is hosted by the Business Improvement District.

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Kellie Pierce, director of both the BID and the Downtown Great Falls Association said that the overall response to the mural festival, which was established in 2019, has been overwhelmingly positive.

“People are loving the vibrancy that art brings to our downtown community, promoting safety and inclusion, and it gives folks a reason to get out and walk around to explore all of the murals, not just the new ones,” Pierce said.

The BID rolled out a new walking tour that’s talk to text and includes information on the existing murals around the downtown and is being updated to include the new murals. The tour includes seven different “trails” so if you follow one to the end of the conversation, it will give you a map of the other ones to explore and it will lead a person on a different trail for those murals. The trails were designed since there are clusters of murals so it made sense to group them into different conversations, or trails, so people can guide themselves based on their timeline, Pierce said.

Look for stickers around the murals with information on how to access the mural tours.

Alison Fried, owner of Dragonfly Dry Goods and a BID board member, said that since some of the first murals were installed on her building at the corner of Central Avenue and 5^th Street, they’ve brought younger people, families and groups to her building and alley for selfies and photos.

Adding the 12 new murals this year, she said “people notice the connectivity.”

Fried said she often hears people saying they’re downtown to grab lunch and explore the murals.

She said “it’s an attraction” and has helped transform her alley traffic and improve safety.

Fried said that during ArtsFest she ran into someone from San Jose who times their vacations with the festival because they love it so much.

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Michelle Houghton also sits on the BID board and owns The Living Room.

Last year, a mural was added to her building.

She said “I am a huge supporter of local art and love the work that the BID has done to make the ArtsFest murals come to life downtown. When I decided to have my building done, I was so excited to have Sheree Nelson as our mural artist as she had already installed a beautiful interior mural for me the year before.”

Houghton said the mural in her alley has led to a “huge increase of ‘selfies’ in front of our mural and several photo shoots…lots of passersby out looking at murals.”

City Bar owner Brad Watson had a mural installed last year on the side of the building by Vizsla Bacon.

This year, some of the artists were in the parking lot behind his building and Britt Johnson, of Texas who was in town with Everyday Research, who painted on Snits, mentioned that she wanted to paint some eyes.

So Watson’s wife gave her a photo of their daughter that Johnson used to inspire the new mural installed on the back of the City Bar during the festival.

“It makes downtown look so much better,” Watson said of the murals. “I watch people all day drive around looking at the murals. It’s art, it’s really cool.”

He said he sees people taking pictures of the murals around his building and throughout the downtown.

Watson said he sat and chatted with Sansing for a few hours as he was working on the mural across the alley on the back of the Special Olympics building.

“They’re great people,” Watson said. “It’s a great thing for downtown.”

Mike Marzetta had planned to have a mural added to the back of his Hoglund’s Western Wear building.

But when Moberg came over to chat, they decided it would be better on the side of the building that overlooks the KellerGeist patio area.

Marzetta and Moberg chatted and Moberg settled on a western inspired mural.

While he was working, Marzetta said his staff would pass drinks and snacks through the upstairs window.

He said it was fun not knowing what the mural might become on his building but was excited for the western theme Moberg created.

The murals “brighten up some old, tired buildings, it really does. When you drive around downtown, it looks beautiful,” Marzetta said. When I drive around myself, I’m looking at buildings I never paid attention to before.”

He and his wife made a date of it recently, grabbing dinner then walking downtown to see the new murals.

“It really brightens up downtown. I love it,” he said. “I just hope people make it downtown to look at them. There’s so many, spend an evening downtown and walk around.”