My wife, Joan, and I are both art lovers as well as enthusiastic travelers. Finding local artworks is always on our agenda. We tour local museums, of course, but we also seek out street art wherever we go. Street art is alive, connected to the community, always interesting, and often surprising. The photos below are a sampling of the building murals that we’ve found on some of our more recent trips around the Pacific Northwest (and beyond), starting with Freak Alley in Boise, Idaho.
Another large collection of building murals can be found in the small town of Nelson, British Columbia, home of the Nelson International Mural Festival.
The town of Leavenworth, Washington offers a more traditional, sponsored set of building murals that highlight the Bavarian village theme of the town.
Other Northwest towns with significant collections of building murals include Chemainus, British Columbia (aka Muraltown), and Estacada, Oregon.
Farther afield, we recently traveled to Arizona where we spent an afternoon exploring the back streets and alleys of the former copper mining town of Bisbee.
Downtown Phoenix also offered up a large collection of building murals and other street art, as well as abundant sunshine and 85 degree October afternoons.
Art enriches everyone’s life. And public art does so in a much more direct and immediate way than art that is hidden away in a museum. And yes, art saves lives.
Posted by Alan K. Lee, November 11, 2019
All photos by the author