Murals a “wow statement” in downtown Great Falls, eighth anual festival underway
The downtown mural festival is back this week, bringing a burst of activity, color and vibrancy.
It’s the eighth annual Great Walls, formerly ArtsFest Montana, festival curated by Cameron Moberg, an internationally known muralist based in California who started painting in Great Falls on the invitation of a friend in collaboration with NeighborWorks Great Falls in 2018.
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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 more than 65 murals.
The murals keep people coming downtown and draw visitors to Great Falls, Moberg said.
The festival keeps the collection growing and “shows that the town is active,” he said.
It’s early in the festival, but he’s been hearing people say they’re moving to Great Falls because it’s a funky art town.
“Murals are such a big statement that things are happening,” Moberg said.
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Jason Kunz, president of the Business Improvement District, said that with new companies coming to town, the murals are a “wow statement,” particularly with such a large collection of artwork.
Moberg said the murals are also a recruiting tool for businesses looking to attract workers to Great Falls.
“If there’s evidence of an active community that’s having a good time, it’s gonna make people want to move here,” Moberg said.
Kunz said they target walls that are continuously tagged to reduce graffiti.
Moberg said that taggers are generally respectful of murals and other artists’ work, but it still happens occasionally.
The festival is organized by the downtown BID through its budget and tax increment financing funds, as well as sponsorships, grants and donations, including from NeighborWorks Great Falls. Local restaurants donate meals for the artists throughout the week and local property owners donate lodging for artists.
Organizers coordinate with downtown property owners to find walls to paint and they’re always looking for more walls for future festivals.
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In the early years of the Great Falls mural festival, the artists were people Moberg, and his wife Crystal, had met through other festivals or been referred to through people they knew.
In recent years, they’ve researched artists they’d like to bring to Great Falls and have conversations with those artists to see if they’d be a good fit.
This year’s artists come from all over the U.S., and include local artist Samantha Houston.
Moberg has worked with Matley Hurd previously, and knows Robert Bowen. They’d worked with Naomi Haverland earlier this year at another festival.
Haverland, based in Orlando, Fla., said the Great Falls festival is “top of the line,” and the artists felt taken care of and welcomed this week.
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“You can tell when you’re in a town that supports the arts,” she said of Great Falls.
Public art like murals is for everyone, she said, versus museums and galleries that may not be as accessible.
“Public art is free. It’s for everyone,” Haverland said. “It’s not elevated or exclusive in any way and everybody benefits from it.”
Murals can also give towns a sense of identity and unite communities, she said.
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In Great Falls, she said it was great to have a group of artists with a variety of styles to add to the mural collection.
Haverland is a brush painter, which she said is becoming a minority among muralists.
She’s been using Meta headsets for about two years to outline her designs on the wall.
She previously used a projector, like many muralists who’ve come through Great Falls, but they’re bulky to travel with, expensive and limited by light, power sources and weather.
Haverland typically uploads the outline of her digital collage design to the headset to transfer that to the wall by hand.
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Moberg said he was against the headsets until about a month ago when he was up against a deadline and borrowed a set from a friend, making the outline process quicker.
For many artists, they’re also contractors and have to consider the business side of their work, he said, though not all artists see it that way.
Every artist has their own battle with technology and AI and it’s interesting to watch the dialogue unfold, he said.
With the rise of AI and tech, “these things have to be a tool, not a crutch,” Moberg said. “It’s making you realize that you have to be a really good storyteller. It’s forcing people to dig deeper in the content.”
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In the U.S., Moberg said there’s money in murals but because of that, ”art is dictated heavily by that and what’s palatable” outside of mural festivals where artists have more creative freedom and control over their work.
Festivals typically contract with artists for a smaller fee and they have creative freedom within some boundaries, depending on the community.
In Europe, Moberg said, artists aren’t paid as much for murals but the body of work is varied and deep in thought.
In Great Falls, Moberg said, “there’s a lot of storytelling in the work.”
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The festival brings interest to Great Falls and it’s a “shock to the system of content” during the week with a flurry of social media photos, videos and posts.
One of this year’s artists, Jeks, has nearly 100,000 Instagram followers, so when he shares his work from this festival, “for the first time, a lot of people will be hearing the name Great Falls,” Moberg said.
Artists have followings and people travel to see their work. In Great Falls, some visitors return every August to see the festival.
Moberg has been coming to Great Falls since 2018, painting his first murals here that fall, and curating the festival every summer since 2019.
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“I think downtown is pretty solid and on an upward trajectory,” he said.
A running joke among artists is that one of the top questions they get is “did you paint that, while you’re painting it,” Moberg said.
The second most common question is whether they do tattoos and thats’ the case for Houston, a local artist.
Local artists, and those from around Montana, have participated in the festival over the years and Moberg hopes to keep that going.
He said he’d heard that one of last year’s artists, Griffin Foster, was commissioned to paint in the new Broke Axe Throwing location on Central Avenue.
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Foster was based in Bozeman last year when he painted the wildland firefighter in the Times Square alley based on a photo of his brother, a member of the Lewis and Clark Hotshot crew that’s based in Great Falls.
Other muralists have continued to grow their business after the festival, like Rilie Tane, who has been contracted to paint additional murals in Great Falls and all over the state.
“Hopefully local artists take this experience and run with it,” Moberg said. “It’s all about what they do with it.”
Want to participate?
View the artists as they work.
This year’s locations and artists are:
Times Square Building, on 6th Street North side of the building
Alley behind Studio Barre/parking lot
Side of Cowboy Slick, 117 Central Ave.
Come to the Great Walls Block Party/Artist Reception
- Aug. 20
- 5-8 p.m.
- snacks, drinks, music, youth art activity
- this year’s muralists will be painting on canvases that will be auctioned during the event
Check out the downtown artwalk
- Aug. 21
- 5-9-ish p.m.
- downtown businesses like The Blue Rose, GRAE + Co. and The Station will be hosting artists and artwork
Get a mural on your walls or sponsor the festival
Own a building and interested in having a mural painted on your walls during a future festival? Want to sponsor the festival? Email kellie@downtowngreatfalls.net.
