Hoodoo Mural Festival art adds character to changing downtown Amarillo
The very face of Amarillo is changing, along with attitudes and businesses popping up with new innovations and creative names, that help breathe life into the Yellow City, otherwise known as Amarillo.
Changes are due in large part to young people who left Amarillo for college or business and come back with new ideas and innovative thinking.
Brilliant, colorful murals are leading a new art movement where the canvas is a large, blank slate of a building and the new Da Vinci are mural artists, and Amarillo is following the trend in a big way.
Katt Massey, a co-founder of the Hoodoo Mural Festival, spoke about the origin of the name of the festival.
"When trying to come up with a name for the festival in 2019, we wanted to pay a nod to the beauty of the Texas Panhandle in conjunction with the murals that were going to be done," Massey said. "We went through all kinds of flowers, geological terms, etc. We spotted the geological name Hoodoo, a thin tall rock formation that is created from water erosion like the Lighthouse formation at Palo Duro Canyon."
Andrew Hall, head of the Hoodoo Mural Festival, along with his wife, Lauren, echoed the feeling.
“We moved back to town in 2013 and we had traveled to Dallas, Denver, Miami and other places and we had noticed what the beautiful, free public art was doing for their communities and businesses. We kept thinking ‘why can’t it happen here?’” Hall said.
Consequently, they got busy and formed the Hoodoo Art Foundation in Amarillo and set their sights on having a Hoodoo Art Festival. “We’re nonprofit, so we raise all this money privately. We started in 2019, took a year off for COVID, and this will be our fifth festival. But really, it’s the third year of this more elevated experience," he added.
“We can’t be more thankful on the support for us: Every person who bought a ticket, every sponsor we had. Our goal was to bring the team together and just by the sight it looks like, goal accomplished. We had 31 muralists this year, 10 were local, and others came from Dallas, Los Angeles and North Carolina. We have a new stage this year we’re excited about that Street Toyota helped with. Last year we promoted local art and this year we can promote local music too. Budweiser/Modelo also helped with the main stage area. It’s been amazing. We had over 40 sponsors who helped us bring this together,” Hall said.
And now, for the fifth year, the Hoodoo Festival can celebrate the beauty and color that murals bring to downtown Amarillo and Polk Street especially. There is something for everyone. Murals that celebrate our Western heritage, a very life-like mural of Terry Funk, well-known wrestler, Hank Williams and just about anything one could imagine or hope for.
Altogether, the Hoodoo movement is proving to be another giant leap in bringing life to the once-forgotten downtown area, to make it a thriving area for visitors and residents and bringing much needed revenue to Amarillo.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Hoodoo Mural Festival adds art to downtown Amarillo scene
