Mural Mania has again hit downtown South Bend. Artists from around the country came last week and they’ve again left the city with some striking and vivid public art.
The mural festival wrapped up its fourth year last week, with artists again coming from around the country. Festival curator Alex Allen says the canvases were bigger this year. She says her favorite is a mural called “Flower” by Richmond, Virginia-based artist Nico Cathcart.
It’s painted on the alley-facing side of the parking garage at Main and Colfax downtown. It’s an 80-foot-tall depiction of Cathcart’s friend, who also is deaf, and she’s using American Sign Language to sign the word “flower.”
“So impressive how, through the heat, she painted this in six days," Allen says. "Just amazing.”
Allen says she’s checking with the Guiness Book of World Records to see if it's the world’s largest image of a deaf person using sign language.
The seven murals painted this year brought the festival’s four-year total to 28. Allen has painted nearly 50 murals in the city herself since 2018. Mural Mania is funded by a mix of city dollars, philanthropic grants, payments from building owners, and a GoFundMe.
“I’m just in love with organizing this," Allen says. "Throughout the week, every time I kind of get tired from running around, errands and taking care of the artists. Multiple times throughout the day I’ll see people come up to either the artists or me and just tell them how much it means to them. That’s my energy. That’s how I get it back.”
