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…. The mural movement Murals in rural Kansas go back at least 100 years, to companies like Coca-Cola commissioning artists to hand-paint advertisements on brick walls. But Marci Penner, executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, said the idea of outdoor art as a means for boosting a small town’s bottom line and staving off population loss has now become, well, trendy. “The trend to utilize (murals) as an economic development tool … to bring people in, to improve quality of life,” she said, “that’s on the rise.” And Penner credits Clay Center, a north-central Kansas town with just under 4,000 residents, as the place that launched a thousand paintbrushes.
Source: Garden City Telegram
