Yonder Walls Mural Festival Aims to Put Birmingham Artists, Stories in the Spotlight

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By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times

A young Black girl reaches for a yellowhammer, Alabama’s state bird, as cotton transforms into dandelion seeds drifting toward the horizon. Nearby, an artist prepares to paint a first mural after years of creating work in other mediums. At another wall, two Birmingham artists are developing a tribute to brothers they lost, using public art to preserve memories that might otherwise remain private.

These stories will soon share space on the walls of Birmingham’s Parkside District, where artists are preparing to turn a stretch of the city into an open-air gallery.

The inaugural Yonder Walls Mural Festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 17, at Urban Supply, bringing together 44 artists to create 34 murals. The free, public festival will feature music, food, vendors and opportunities for residents to experience the work of artists transforming the surrounding walls. The festival will include music acts by Shaheed & DJ Supreme, Love Moor, and many others, with Pynk Beard headlining.

But for the organizers and artists involved, the festival represents more than a day of entertainment or a new collection of colorful backdrops. It aims to create opportunities for Alabama artists, give personal and historical narratives greater visibility, and strengthen Birmingham’s identity as a place where creative people can build meaningful careers.

Rachel “Levi” Levinson, co-director of Yonder Walls and a member of Bendy Knees Design Co., said the idea grew from firsthand experience with what a mural festival can make possible. Levinson and her colleagues served on a mural festival committee in Oklahoma City for four years before deciding to bring a similar opportunity to Alabama.

“We’ve experienced firsthand what a festival at this scale can do for a community,” Levinson said.

The team wanted to create a space where artists already working in Alabama could receive life-changing opportunities that too often go to artists from outside the state.

“We want to elevate the talent that’s already here,” Levinson said.

That goal became the foundation for a festival built around local talent, artist autonomy, and the belief that creative work deserves compensation.

Creating opportunities beyond the canvas

For Levinson, one of the most meaningful parts of organizing the festival has been seeing artists receive opportunities they once thought might never come.

Of the 44 participating artists, 35% are first-time muralists, according to Levinson. Some have established artistic practices but have never had the opportunity to work on a large public wall.

That includes Yogi Dada, a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans visual and wearable art, filmmaking, poetry, music and writing. Although she has spent years developing her creative practice, Yonder Walls will be her first mural.

Yogi Dada will invite community members to leave their handprints on her work. (Provided)

Dada grew up in upstate New York before moving to Alabama at 18. After earning her art degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she received discouraging feedback about her style and stepped away from painting and drawing for 17 years.

“I had so much negative feedback about my style being too ethnic, too funky, too colorful,” she said.

During that period, Dada worked as an optician while continuing to explore other creative outlets. Her mother, Victoria Carter, had encouraged her artistic abilities from childhood, exposing her to painting, poetry, music, theater and other forms of expression.

Dada returned to painting during her mother’s illness and later built a business around hand-painted wooden earrings that grew into a broader creative brand. Her work has since expanded across mediums, including a film titled GRAFFICA, which won Best Feature Film in the Black Lens category at the Sidewalk Film Festival in 2021.

Now, she is preparing to bring that creative perspective to a large public wall.

Her mural, titled “For Da People,” will feature vibrant imagery and invite community members to leave their handprints on the work, an interactive element she hopes will allow residents to become part of its creation.

For Dada, the opportunity is both exciting and overwhelming. She compared the experience to stepping out of a boat and walking on water, a metaphor for moving beyond the familiar and trusting herself in a new artistic space.

The opportunity also reflects one of Yonder Walls’ central aims: making room for artists at different points in their careers, including those who have never been invited to create at this scale.

Levinson said the festival is designed to give artists control over their work rather than treating them as contractors expected to reproduce a client’s branding or message.

Artists submitted renderings to help organizers determine placement and coordinate the overall layout, but they retain creative control over their designs.

For Levinson, that distinction matters in an industry where artists can be asked to provide labor in exchange for exposure.

“You don’t have to be exploited out here,” she said. “People will pay you. This isn’t a hobby.”

Yonder Walls has also created paid opportunities beyond the murals themselves. Its “Decks and Cans” art show featured 68 artists, including 30 who painted custom skateboards and 38 who decorated custom spray-paint cans. The event split donations evenly: half went to the participating artists, and half supported the nonprofit.

The show created another entry point for artists who wanted to participate but did not necessarily have the time or capacity to take on a large mural.

Levinson recalled being surprised to discover that a teacher and one of her students had both been selected for the show without knowing the other had applied.

For her, that moment illustrated how creative opportunities can connect people across generations while strengthening a community’s artistic network.

Levinson said organizers raised approximately $150,000 for the inaugural festival and expect about 75% of the budget to go back to artists. Alabama Power is the presenting sponsor, and a local developer donated the walls for the project.

The organizers hope the inaugural event will lay the groundwork for future festivals and year-round programming, including workshops, creative meetups, panel discussions, mentorship, and youth activities.

Their longer-term vision includes bringing public art into Birmingham’s 99 neighborhoods.

Turning personal histories into public art

For some artists, the walls offer a chance to tell stories about grief, family and the people who shaped their lives.

Jourdan McGowan and Daniel Williams, two Birmingham artists who work at the Birmingham Museum of Art in different roles, are collaborating on a sports-themed memorial mural near Fairway Social.

The two had never worked together before the festival paired them. They discovered that their artistic interests and personal experiences aligned, including the loss of their brothers, both of whom were athletes.

Their mural will honor those men while connecting their memories to Birmingham’s sports culture.

McGowan, who works under the name Art of Truth, grew up in Enterprise, Alabama, and earned a fine arts degree from the University of Alabama. His practice includes portraiture, murals, live painting, photography and public art. His work frequently explores identity, faith, grief, culture and resilience.

His older brother died in 2022 at age 31 while training to become a firefighter in Huntsville. Since then, McGowan has incorporated his brother’s memory into his art, finding ways to preserve a relationship that continues through stories, images and family.

McGowan hopes the work can help his young niece maintain a connection to her father.

“So if I can continue to tell that story and make the memory right, she can have some type of connection to her father,” he said.

For McGowan, art also creates room for conversations about grief that can be difficult to have openly, particularly among Black men who may have been taught to suppress their emotions.

“I feel like a lot of times, definitely about Black men, we don’t open up about how we really feel because that’s not what we were taught,” he said.

He wants his work to communicate that painful experiences can be acknowledged and transformed without diminishing the people who were lost.

Williams, a Birmingham native with roots in Ensley, has spent more than two decades creating art. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio art from UAB, with a concentration in printmaking and a minor in art history. He now works as a teaching artist at the Birmingham Museum of Art, bringing arts programming into schools, libraries, churches and other community settings.

His artistic style draws from pop art, Black culture and popular culture, including anime and manga.

The mural will honor his older brother, Chris Williams, who died at 36. A basketball player who attended Minor High School, Chris also played college basketball at UAB and continued his athletic career overseas, according to Williams.

Williams described his brother as someone who was more than a sibling to him and who served as an older brother to many people.

“I feel like paying homage to him is kind of like putting on for all his other little brothers,” Williams said.

The collaboration gives both artists a shared space to remember their brothers while contributing to a public setting associated with sports and recreation.

Their work also illustrates how a mural can carry a deeply personal meaning for its creators while inviting a much wider audience to reflect on family, loss and legacy.

Imagining a different future for Alabama

Other murals will look to Alabama’s history and the possibilities that future generations might inherit.

Nadia Johnson, a 21-year-old mixed-media painter from Pleasant Grove, will collaborate with artist Zelaya Leggete, who goes by Zee, on a mural that connects the state’s past with hope for the future.

Johnson’s composition features a young Black girl interacting with a yellowhammer, Alabama’s state bird. Beneath the central image, cotton gradually transforms into dandelion seeds floating into the distance.

The symbolism is deliberate.

Johnson said the cotton represents generations who endured slavery and other hardships in the South. The dandelion seeds represent freedom, peace and opportunity that future generations may inherit because of the resilience and sacrifices of those who came before them.

The young girl at the center of the image brings the story forward, connecting historical memory to the lives and possibilities of Black children today.

Johnson, who attended Jefferson County International Baccalaureate High School at the Shades Valley campus, said she has been drawn to art since first grade, when she began drawing portraits of her classmates.

Her work now blends surrealism, expressionism and fantastical elements to explore memory, identity, Black girlhood and womanhood. She combines materials and textures to create layered compositions that encourage viewers to look closely and make their own connections.

One of her influences is Faith Ringgold, the artist and author whose work used storytelling to preserve history and challenge racial and gender inequalities.

Johnson said Ringgold’s example reminds her that art can communicate personal experiences while making space for voices that have historically been underrepresented.

Through E.L. Chisolm’s Creative Communities Workshop, Johnson learned about Yonder Walls’ call for artists. Encouragement from festival board members and facilitators helped convince her to apply.

She hopes the festival will help younger and emerging artists see that there is room for them in Birmingham’s art community.

“Public art can transform everyday spaces and make people feel more connected to the stories, the culture, and creativity that makes Birmingham so special,” Johnson said.

For Johnson, the mural offers a chance to make Alabama’s history visible while imagining a more peaceful, promising future.

The theme of rediscovery also runs through the work of Amber Orr, a Birmingham native and educator who will collaborate with 18-year-old artist Josie Butler.

Orr grew up in Ensley and began drawing as a child, inspired by anime, Dragon Ball Z, wrestling and Disney musicals. She attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing, with a minor in art history, from the University of Montevallo.

She later spent about five years teaching young children, an experience that shaped her understanding of creativity, play and the ways art can support emotional growth.

After a difficult period that included losing her mother during the COVID-19 era, Orr took a three-year hiatus from creating art. The time away became a period of grief, reflection and self-discovery. She said she emerged with a renewed desire to create work that celebrates her inner child and encourages others to embrace their authentic selves.

“I’m gonna let my inner child shine, and it’s time to let her out and let her play,” Orr said.

Her work draws on surrealism, emotion and imagery designed to make people feel beautiful, seen and larger than life. She describes her creative return as an opportunity to bring more light into a world that can feel chaotic.

Orr said she and Butler are bringing complementary visual worlds together for their mural. Butler’s work leans toward a dreamy, pink, sky-inspired atmosphere, while Orr’s imagery draws on the ocean’s depths and her love of water.

Their composition will bring the sky and sea together in an embrace, using the contrast between the two environments to create a shared scene. The artists are keeping some design elements secret until the mural is revealed.

Butler, a Birmingham artist studying at Amherst College in Massachusetts, works in acrylic, gouache and digital media. Her work explores portraiture, nature and personal experiences, often incorporating social justice and advocacy. She has created portraits honoring women who have experienced homelessness, and her first mural was a protest mural.

Together, the artists bring different experiences and approaches to a project that reflects the festival’s wider emphasis on collaboration and creative freedom.

Orr also hopes the festival will help Birmingham move beyond narrow assumptions about Alabama and make the city’s artistic community more visible.

For her, Birmingham is bigger than stereotypes and even bigger than its history, and she believes public art is one way to help the city express that larger identity.

Building a creative home in Birmingham

The artists’ stories reflect the broader vision that Levinson and the Yonder Walls team hope to establish.

Levinson moved to Alabama from New Mexico as a teenager and attended Chelsea High School and Birmingham-Southern College. She said she stayed in Birmingham because of its creative community and the chance to build something new.

“It just felt like Birmingham was in a prime position of, like, if it’s not already happening, then you can help make it happen,” she said.

That sense of possibility helped shape the festival. Levinson and her colleagues saw an opportunity to bring a large-scale mural event to a city with artists who had the talent but not always the access to major public projects.

Organizing the event required building relationships with property owners, sponsors and city officials who needed to understand the scale of the plan. Board members brought experience in development, public art, urban design, education and the local arts community.

The festival also reflects an effort to connect artists with resources beyond a single event. Through workshops and other year-round programming, Yonder Walls wants to help artists navigate contracts, set prices and protect their work, while helping clients understand how to hire muralists professionally.

The organizers’ emphasis on artist autonomy is central to that mission. They want the murals to reflect the artists’ ideas and experiences rather than turn public walls into extensions of corporate branding.

The work will be concentrated in a walkable area near Urban Supply and Fairway Social, giving residents a chance to see multiple murals in one place. Organizers have said the walls will receive a protective anti-graffiti coating and expect the murals to last as long as 10 years, depending on conditions.

Artists are scheduled to paint during the week leading up to the festival, allowing the public to watch the work take shape before the event’s finishing touches, performances and community activities on Oct. 17.

The festival is free, and organizers encourage residents to visit, engage with the work, and support the participating artists.

For the artists, the week offers a chance to work alongside peers, share techniques and contribute to a public art project that will remain after the music and vendors leave.

For residents, the murals will provide new ways to encounter stories about Birmingham and Alabama — stories of family, grief, childhood, identity, history and possibility.

Levinson said the festival isn’t about the organizers getting credit. It is about creating opportunities for people who have spent years making art and deserve a chance to see their work on a larger scale.

“This is for Birmingham, by Birmingham,” she said.

The walls may be the most visible result of Yonder Walls, but the larger ambition is to help build a city where artists can find paid work, creative support and an audience for their stories.

If the inaugural festival succeeds, its legacy could extend beyond the Parkside District, bringing more public art into Birmingham’s neighborhoods and giving more artists a place in the city’s cultural landscape.

Yonder Walls Murals Festival is set for October 17, 12 to 8 p.m., at Urban Supply in Birmingham’s Parkside District. Learn more at yonderwalls.com.