Phoenix Mural Project

Seed Grant Semester Awarded
Spring
Seed Grant Award Year
2018

Phoenix Mural Project begins as a digital archive of the city’s ephemeral world of muralism—see ~400 images at phxmuralproject.org. While Phoenix has had an active mural-painting scene for many years, it hasn’t been well-documented or studied. Indeed, outside Arizona, Phoenix often goes unnoticed as a hub of arts + culture. Due to this isolation, local artists created a visual style different from other “art cities.” Phoenix Mural Project weaves humanities with disciplines like design, tourism, psychology, visual rhetoric, and social justice. Research methods include: photography, visual analysis, oral histories, impact studies, and community field studies. The project’s multi-faceted nature offers many avenues for audience engagement—website, maps, images, interviews, documentary film, exhibition, tours, and public interaction with artists. This is a resource for residents, visitors, scholars. It preserves art, collects stories, and celebrates grass-roots street art culture, and improves the national and international visibility of Phoenix as a world-class creative city.

Principal Investigator(s)

Danielle Foushee | Assistant Professor | Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts