Matt Miller slowly walks backward into the middle of 5th Street in downtown Hays. The wall in front of him used to make up the plain, gray side of a local glass shop. Now, it’s his giant concrete canvas — 13 feet tall by more than 18 feet wide — for painting one of the northwest Kansas town’s new murals. It’s so large that he has to take a step back every once in a while just to get a good look at his progress. “I still need to make that brightest highlight a little brighter, but it’s close,” he said. “I could probably about bust into dancing right now.” From Hays to Great Bend to Lecompton, small towns across the state increasingly turn to larger-than-life works of art to inspire pride among residents and attract tourists. And as more towns blaze this artistic trail, the economic benefits of murals — and the roadmap to getting them done — come into focus.
Source: KCUR News
