Painting murals in downtown Great Falls since 2018, Cameron Moberg has noticed the evolution.

“What I’ve noticed every year, I feel that it’s gotten slightly safer and cleaner downtown. But the jump from last year to this year, walking the alleys feels much safer,” Moberg said during the sixth annual ArtsFest, now dubbed Great Walls.

Moberg, an internationally known muralist based in California, started painting in Great Falls on the invitation of a friend in collaboration with NeighborWorks Great Falls.

That has since grown into an annual mural festival in downtown Great Falls with a group of artists from across the globe each August creating nearly 50 murals.

Great Walls 2024: Photos

Going into the 2024 festival this year, Moberg said it felt like a lot of high caliber hyper-realistic pieces had been painted in the last few years, “so I felt it was really important to bring in way more colors and funky stuff this year. I wanted it to feel different wall to wall.”

Great Walls mural festival returns to downtown Aug. 17-24

Moberg is always on the lookout for artists who will be a good fit for the Great Falls festival by watching their social media and having conversations with them to learn their artistic processes and character.

The muralists have artistic freedom on the walls for the festival, outside of some rules, and Moberg looks for artists who will build the Great Falls mural collection.

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“Moberg owns Talking Walls, which is the company he uses to curate mural festivals with his wife Crystal, who was back in Great Falls this year helping coordinate the festival.

Over the years, Moberg said they’ve seen more people come out every year as awareness of the festival has grown.

This year, he said “more people expressing their gratefulness,” of the artists and their murals.

One of his favorite moments of the 2024 festival was a person seeing a mural sketched out on a wall and she said she didn’t understand it or like it.

As the week progressed and the mural evolved, Moberg said the woman came back to say she liked it.

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This year’s festival included a unique collaboration between Fasm, who’s participated in Great Walls for five years, and Farid Reuda, an artist from Mexico.

They’d never met or talked before coming into the Great Falls festival.

Reuda said that Moberg showed him photos of the building they had picked for him. Reuda said he saw how big the wall was and that a telephone pole was smack in the middle and discussed a potential collaboration.

Reuda said that Moberg showed him Fasm’s work and he trusted in the artists, agreeing to a collaboration.

Reuda said he’d initially planned to paint his panther design at another festival, but decided it would match up well with Fasm’s style.

It was Reuda’s idea, Fasm said, to put Fasm’s realistic style up next to Reuda’s style.

The two artists both like painting animals and it was a good match for a cross-style.

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Reuda said that he took photos as Fasm painted and flipped the image to make sure his design would line up.

Fasm started first so Reuda could prepare the proportions, ensuring they matched up. Fasm said knowing that, he worked to paint certain areas first, including the eye and nose.

Reuda said he doesn’t often collaborate because it can be challenging to make changes midway through, “but this was nice. It was a challenge, but this was successful, a good match.”

Reuda titled the piece “Borderline” based on the telephone pole, Fasm being American and Reuda being Mexican and political differences with the building owner.

“I think it’s nice,” he said, of their differences in nationality, language and style, “but we can create something together and it’s a beautiful thing.”

It was an example of art’s unifying powers, Moberg said.

“What would have otherwise be annoying, a giant telephone pole, turned out to create such a beautiful collaboration,” Moberg said. “This year, I appreciated that it literally brought people from different political beliefs into the same space and created unity. Our country is really divided. I think art is something that can unite us.”

Art is something to spark conversations, he said.

“Art, it does that. It brings people to stand at a wall together. It brings artists and building owners closer together. In today’s climate, I think that’s extremely important.”

Of their collaboration, Fasm said “the contrast makes it unique” and Reuda added it represents them very well with a “powerful” energy.

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Onlookers were impressed with the colors and details in Fasm’s half, such as water droplets. Reuda included the colors of Latin America.

The two artists shared a laugh that some people thought the same person was painting the whole piece.

Public art can “renew the area, now it’s not like the same area. Now, you want to have a bench and sit and look at the mural,” Reuda said. “When you are surrounded by art, start to have criteria, knowledge. You start to imagine.”

Those who have public art can travel to another place without it and imagine what could be there,” he said.

“It changes the environment, improves areas and becomes part of the lives of the people,” Reuda said.

He’s worked in galleries, but there, people are largely conditioned to understand what they’re seeing is considered art.

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“When you paint in the streets, people say what they think,” Reuda said, and criticism is also helpful to artists. “Museums go to the streets.”

On the other side of Reuda, Conse, an artist from Barcelona, Spain, was painting. As they were talking in Great Falls, they realized they were both headed next to a festival in London where they’d be painting next to each other again.

Natalie Shugailo, who goes by (sub)urban warrior, from the Chicago suburbs, said she was enjoying her time in Great Falls and loves Montana and the western way of life.

She said people had been excited about the murals, “which makes me jazzed and excited. I’m enjoying my time for sure.”

She tilted her mural “Protectors,” with a bull moose and mama bear, named Mortimer and Bea.

Shugailo focuses much of her work on scenes about preserving nature and in her mural on the back of the Odds and Ends antique shop next to Tracy’s Diner in the 100 block of Central Avenue, included formidable animals, plus a flower in between to represent nurturing and protecting nature, as well as lily pads symbolizing creating life.

ArtsFest MONTANA 2020 kicks off in Great Falls

She said she was happy to paint some of the notable animals of Montana and had only painted one, much smaller, moose before.

“Now you have a giant, epic moose,” she said.

Public art, she said, is a “universal language. You don’t have to speak the same language or agree on things. Art creates conversations. It can spark a smile. That’s my main goal, to bring some happiness to people.”

Jesse Hernandez, who paints under the name urbanaztec, added a pop of color in 1st Alley South, off 2nd Street.

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In his mural, titled Warrior Spirit, he depicted an eagle warrior and a jaguar warrior, which are traditional characters in Aztec culture.

“I’m bringing some culture and scenes to the area that isn’t necessarily here before, and get to share some of my culture here and bring some vibrancy and culture and make it pop off the wall a bit,” he said. “Bring some good medicine to the people.”

He’s painted in mural festivals all over and had a “fantastic time, I loved it out here,” he said of Great Falls.

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“Getting to see all the stuff that people have done in previous years, it’s amazing, the amount of art that’s collected in the city right now, there’s folks, worldclass, everyone has different styles and it’s super fun to get to trip out on each others work and hang out in an area that none of us are from, so we’re all forced to kick it. It’s great, everyone’s on an even playing field and stoked to be around each other. Any time you get a ton of artists together, it’s always a ton of fun.”

Often, they’re painting by themselves, Hernandez said and “”don’t necessarily get to have the fun and camaraderie that you get to have at an event like this.”

Public art, Hernandez said, “brings a lot of people together and creates an awesome space for the art and pride in your community. You take something like where there’s just walls for days of nothing and then suddenly you create a sort of spectacle in that environment so it’s always really inspiring for everyone around. It’s pretty cool to see. It was just a wall or an alley before that no one cared particularly cared. You’re creating a space that people are happy to be around.”