Blaine mural festival to bring acclaimed artists

A mural going up on the G Street Plaza is the first in a new mural festival slated to bring international artists to Blaine later this month.

OverAll Walls founder Margaret Owens said she hopes to create an annual mural festival in Blaine, which kicked off September 9 with artist Emily Ding, of Houston, painting sandpipers on the side of the Blaine Bouquets wall facing G Street Plaza.

“The fact that this teeny, tiny little town will have artists who do nothing but travel and paint is pretty incredible,” said Owens, who helped start the Wide Open Walls mural festival in Sacramento before moving to Blaine in 2022.

Ding, who needed to start work early due to scheduling, is the first of three artists who will be painting murals and creating art installations during the last week of September. The other artists will be Tom Bob, a New York City artist who will create street art from mundane city objects; a British muralist who goes by the name My Dog Sighs; and local Tlingit artist Justin Ketah.

Ketah is expected to start painting a mural on the car wash by Blaine City Hall the weekend of Saturday, September 21. Bob is anticipated to create street art around Blaine Tuesday, September 24 and My Dog Sighs will paint the front wall of the Blaine Arts Gallery starting Wednesday, September 25. Ding may return to Blaine during the last week of September to do additional work on the mural if needed, Owens said.

The artists’ work is expected to be finished by the end of September, Owens said.

Owens said she hopes the festival will enhance the arts and tourism in Blaine. She hopes, in part, this will be accomplished through the artists’ notoriety. Combined, the artists have over 375,000 followers on Instagram, with Bob having over 247,000 followers (@TomBobNYC), My Dog Sighs having 92,100 followers (@mydogsighs) and Ding having 36,000 (@_emilyding).

The artists have also been featured in national news. The Guardian ran an article in August titled “Beyond Banksy: the other British street artists you should know” that featured My Dog Sighs, and BuzzFeed published an article in late July on Bob’s work titled “You have to see how this street artist turns pipes, curbs, and sewer grates into storybook works of art.” Ding’s work has been featured in the Houston Chronicle, CBS News and Axios.

OverAll Walls

Owens, who is also president of Blaine Arts Council, formed OverAll Walls as a nonprofit in January and is currently the sole manpower behind the organization. She hopes to change that, however, in growing the festival next year.

Owens said she wanted to create a festival in Blaine similar to the Wide Open Walls mural festival she helped form in Sacramento, California and ran through this year. The festival started in 2017, according to its website.

The idea for Wide Open Walls came from its founder David Sobon wanting to brighten rundown areas. Owens began working for Sobon’s auctioneering business and the next year he wanted to start a mural business, she said.

Wide Open Walls has quickly covered Sacramento in artwork. The festival has created over 600 mural projects, according to its website, many of which are in Sacramento schools. The festival has grown to include concerts, gallery shows, artist talks and more.

“My focus before I even moved here was, ‘How do I turn Blaine into an art destination with all kinds of incredible art that you might only see if you go to Vancouver or Seattle?’” she said. “You don’t see something like this anywhere else, except mostly in bigger cities.”

Owens said she brought her idea to the city of Blaine, which she said gave her direction and was supportive of her project. Owens invited the artists and gave them an idea of what to paint based on conversations with city staff and building owners, but left creative freedom up to the artists. The murals are intended to remain after the festival.

“It will be interesting over the next few years to see the caliber of artists we’ll get in Blaine,” she said.