For artist Armando Silva and musician and art manager Briana Harris, bringing a mural festival to Greeley was a no-brainer. The city has a decades-long history of investment in public art. Large-scale works are splashed across walls around the city, with a particular concentration of murals downtown. Spend five minutes on the 8th Avenue corridor, and you’ll find yourself orienting around these landmarks.
This legacy of art laid a natural pathway for Silva and Harris to introduce a celebration of public art in Greeley through the WeldWalls Mural Festival.
The second annual WeldWalls festival will take place September 16-20, 2025, in various locations downtown. Expanding the footprint of last year’s festival, where several exterior walls at WeldWerks Brewing Company became a canvas for local and national artists, this year’s festival will see locations like Goal High School, B&H Auto Body, and Art Alley getting much more than a fresh coat of paint.
The vision behind the WeldWalls Mural Festival combines the city’s legacy of public art with its identity as an intersection of cultures.
“We wanted to create a sense of cultural exchange between our community and people who might be visiting from outside of it, between our artists on the lineup, and also between the artists and the audience,” Harris told me.
Murals serve as a distinct and accessible landmark of the city’s cultural identity. The magic of murals, Silva told me, and the hope he has for those who attend this festival, is that they remind you: “You are here.”
“In a world where there’s AI, and there’s so much digital, [a mural festival] is this really nice conduit for you to come out and be present, engage, or even get your hands full of paint and make something,” Silva said.
The theme from last year, “The New West,” continues this year. Both Harris and Silva leave this theme broadly open for both artists and event attendees to define.
“It’s a fun container for people to bring their own perspectives to,” Harris said. “What does it mean for us as the community continues to evolve and change over time and welcomes more and more types of people and voices into the narrative?”
And that’s the idea: The New West is for us — the old, the young, the native, the visitor — to shape with our brushstrokes.
This year’s event brings a brand new lineup of both local and national artists, ranging from nationally recognized muralists to art students. BlackBox Arts Collective, a local group of artists, will be contributing a mural this year, and its executive director Layne McCaleb spoke to the importance of community expression at this event.
“We are all very proud of where we live and of the community of artists we have here,” McCaleb told me. “We believe this will be a great chance to highlight some of the voices in our community.”
How community members engage with the art is as key a part of the event as the art itself.
“There is an opportunity to engage both playfully and thoughtfully,” Silva said. He and Harris have planned a schedule for the festival that offers a little something for everyone. Those who want to engage deeply with the art can enjoy a Q&A with the artists on Wednesday at the UNC Gallery at Campus Commons. For those who want to wander through the mural sites and maybe even bring a little piece of the event home, there’s Friday’s Art Night Out. And Saturday boasts the big celebration, with mural tours, hands-on art activities, and pop-up shops from Northern Colorado artists and makers.
The festival is supported by several local businesses and organizations, including those mentioned who have shared their walls; the Greeley Art Commission; WeldWerks, which will once again host the celebration on Saturday; the Doubletree Hotel, which is housing artists from out of town; and the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), which not only sponsored the event but also helped connect artists to walls in need of new life.
Throughout the festival’s four days, you can find the artists at various sites downtown and witness the transformation yourself. You may even have the chance to get a little paint on your hands and leave your mark: You were here.
For the full schedule, artist lineup, and other event details, visit weldwalls.com.
