Boom! Street Art and Mural Festival comes to Salina in October

Charles Rankin, Salina Journal
·4 min read
The "Mural at the Mill" by Guido Van Helten was brought to downtown by the Salina Kanvas Project. The Kanvas Project is bringing five additional murals to downtown with the Boom! Street Art and Mural Festival this October.
The "Mural at the Mill" by Guido Van Helten was brought to downtown by the Salina Kanvas Project. The Kanvas Project is bringing five additional murals to downtown with the Boom! Street Art and Mural Festival this October.

After working to bring other projects, including the "Mural at the Mill" at the HD Flour Mill, the Salina Kanvas Project wants to continue to bring works of art to downtown Salina, with the Boom! Street Art and Mural Festival coming to the city in October.

The festival is bringing artists to Salina beginning Oct. 6 to paint murals on five walls in downtown Salina to celebrate and enhance the visual landscape of the city.

Eric Montoy, one of the co-founders of the Kanvas Project, said the idea behind both the project and the festival is to bring people from all over to downtown Salina.

"It's privately funded by generous donors and the property owners (of the walls) have this collective consciousness that they want to foster a creative culture in downtown Salina," Montoy said. "(We) really want to bolster tourism and bring foot traffic to that downtown area."

Montoy said the festival is about bringing in world-class artists. The featured artists this year will be making their way to Salina from both the East and West Coasts and Europe, with multiple styles and themes represented.

"The goal is to bring vibrance and attract large-scale murals downtown," Montoy said.

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Who are the artists coming to Salina?

In all, there are five artists or artist duos coming to paint walls located throughout downtown. The locations include around Campbell Plaza, behind the Prickly Pear, in the parking lot of the northwest corner of Santa Fe Avenue and Ash Street, an elevator shaft near UMB Bank and a wall on the American Legion building on Seventh Street that is now owned by the Ashby House.

The five artists include:

  • Tony Sjoman, from New York City, who has roots in Scandinavia, from which he takes inspiration.

  • From the Netherlands, TelmoMiel is composed of Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann. They use different styles to create separate sketches that combine into a singular, unique piece.

  • Mona Caron, who was born in Switzerland and is now based in San Francisco, who is most known for multiple-story murals that show the resilience of weeds.

  • Youri Cansell, known as Mantra, uses naturalism to his benefit while painting murals that often depict moths and butterflies.

  • Logan Hicks and Joe Iurato, who both work in stencil art, with Iurato also dealing in other disciplines, including aeorsol.

In addition to these five artists, Montoy said Martha Cooper, a renowned documentary photographer, will also be in Salina throughout the month.

"A lot of the artists in the graffiti and mural movements attribute...that whole scene back to her," Montoy said. "She was a photographer in New York in the '70s and '80s, when hip-hop and graffiti were taking off, and she documented everything."

Montoy said artists thank Cooper for laying the groundwork for much of what is known about the graffiti scene.

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In addition to Cooper being in Salina working and documenting the festival, the Salina Art Center will be featuring an exhibit of Cooper's work and the Art Cinema is set to screen a documentary she created.

"That's a huge addition, and I think a huge draw for other muralists that know her and want to come check (the festival) out," Montoy said.

More Boom! in the coming years

Montoy said while this is the first Boom! festival, the Kanvas Project is not expecting it to be the last. In coming years, the organization hopes to bring more street artists, not just muralists to work in downtown Salina.

"There's so many different expressions of that (street art) genre," Montoy said. "Whether that's painting gas meters to look like flamingos or other things...It doesn't have to be 2D always."

As mentioned before, the artists are set to arrive on Oct. 6 and will paint through the month, ending around Oct. 16. Montoy said the Kanvas Project is hoping to have some sort of finale event for the public around Oct. 15 or 16, but that he hopes people walking or driving through downtown during the month will stop and take a look as these works of art take shape.

This article originally appeared on Salina Journal: Salina Kanvas Project launches street art and mural festival October