Why One Downtown Mural Is Growing Instead of Disappearing This Week

There is a small painted panel on the Division Street side of the Brewery Arts Center that most people who drive past it every day have stopped noticing. It shows brewers from the old Carson Brewing Company, a piece that has hung on that wall for decades. It is not much bigger than a garage door. But descendants of the men in that painting still come by to see it, and when Brewery Arts Center executive director Spike McGuire started planning this year's mural additions, simply painting over the panel did not feel like an option.

So instead of retiring it, the BAC is expanding it. Nevada muralist Erik Burke is recreating the image at a much larger scale, stretching the imagery across the exterior of the BAC annex rather than the cramped original panel. That single decision says more about what is happening in Carson City this week than any festival press release does. The murals here are not decoration that gets refreshed on a schedule. They are becoming a kind of civic memory, and the people running the program are treating them that way.

That context matters because the fourth annual Murals & Music Festival runs September 15 through 19, and if you live here, this is the week the walls around you change again.

The count you're about to walk past

The Brewery Arts Center and Visit Carson City started this festival in 2023 with 23 murals painted over a single long weekend. Over the following two years, artists added roughly 40 more. Add it up and organizers say the count sits at more than 70 murals citywide heading into this year's event. This week's 15 additions push the total past 85, all accumulated in just three years of festivals.

Fourteen artists are working this round, a mix of Nevada regulars and international names making their first Carson City appearance. The roster:

From outside Nevada:

• Heesco, a Mongolian-Australian muralist based in Melbourne with two decades of large-scale public art experience
• Jokin Sortwo and Lara Hurtado, muralists from Spain's Basque Country
• PRISM A.G., visiting from Mexico
• Rafael Blanco, based in San Antonio, Texas
• Bill Louis, from Utah

Nevada-based artists:

• Alex Kaskie and Andrew Doiron, both Carson City residents
• Erik Burke, Hayley Meadows, Anthony Ortega, Bryce Chisholm, and several others who have painted in past festival years

McGuire has said organizers try to bring at least three international artists every year, partly because artists who travel constantly for mural work are hard to book for a single commission elsewhere. A festival format gives Carson City a reason to show up on their calendars.

What's actually happening each day

The murals themselves get painted throughout the week, but the evening programming is where the festival tries something different each year. This year's schedule:

The Thursday workshop is worth flagging if you have never been to one of these before. It is the first time the festival has built in a piece the public actually helps paint. Jokin Sortwo and Lara Hurtado will fold whatever the community creates that evening into their finished mural, so the wall itself will carry a bit of whoever shows up.

Almost everything on that list is free. The Friday night show is the one ticketed exception.

Catch them working, not just the finished wall

McGuire's advice to residents is simple: the evening events are worth attending, but the actual painting happens during daylight hours, and that is when you get to watch a blank wall turn into something over the course of a lunch break or an evening walk.

"Anytime I go anywhere in Carson City, there's just a great mural around every corner," McGuire told the Nevada Appeal this week. He's encouraged people to get out into the streets during the day and catch the muralists mid-project rather than waiting for a finished reveal.

That is a different way to spend a week than most festival coverage suggests. You are not driving somewhere to see art on a schedule. You are running your usual errands and passing a wall that looked one way Monday morning and looks different by Thursday afternoon.

Why this isn't a one-week event, even though it feels like one

Here is the part that separates this from a typical arts festival. The Brewery Arts Center generally asks building owners who host a mural to commit to keeping it up for at least three years. Some last far longer than that. Others come down sooner than anyone planned, because buildings get remodeled or torn down and paint eventually weathers no matter how well it was applied.

McGuire has put it plainly: murals are temporary by nature, whether anyone wants them to be or not. That is exactly why the festival organizers say they are already thinking past this year, looking at other forms of public art for the capital city once the current mural push runs its course.

It also explains why the Carson Brewing Company panel got the treatment it did instead of a repaint. A mural that has stood for decades and still draws visits from the families connected to it is not something you retire quietly. You give it more wall.

The practical version

If you want to see this week's additions without hunting block by block, printed maps covering all three years of murals are available at the Brewery Arts Center, 449 W. King St., and at the Visitors Center, 716 N. Carson St., Suite A. The map gets updated each year to fold in the newest locations alongside everything painted since 2023, so one copy covers the whole outdoor collection, not just this week's work.

Most of what is happening this week is free, walkable, and does not require planning much beyond deciding which afternoon you have twenty minutes to spare. The Friday night show is the one thing worth buying a ticket for in advance if live music is your reason for going.

What you are actually watching this week is not a festival passing through. It is the fourth round of a project that has quietly reshaped which walls in this town have something to say, and organizers have already shown they are willing to make more room when a piece earns it.

Heidi McFadden has lived and worked in Carson City long enough to remember the blank wall the brewery mural used to be. If you are curious what your own corner of this changing town is worth these days, her team offers a free home valuation any time you're ready to ask.