Naomi Haverland’s mural on the side of Element Ring Co., 2890 S Main St, South Salt Lake.

“Besides my children, this has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I would have done all this for free.”

Lesly Allen is talking about South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest, now in its ninth year and established as Utah’s largest mural festival. She’s not being sentimental. She means it practically: in the early years, when the budget was thin and the concept unproven, the work ran largely on belief—hers, and that of the artists who showed up anyway.

The festival launched in 2018, when Allen was Executive Arts Director for the City of South Salt Lake (she now manages the festival as an independent contractor). That first year was, by her own description, an experiment. “We were like, hey, we’ve got all these big blank walls. Let’s go paint some murals. How hard can it be?” The answer, it turned out, was: considerably harder than expected, and considerably more rewarding.

The moment Allen knew the festival had a future came in 2019, its second year. An artist named ARCY, based in Connecticut, drove across the country to paint the train mural at Level Crossing in South Salt Lake. The festival’s budget was modest—”I’m not proud of what we paid him,” Allen says—and there was no accommodations budget, so ARCY slept in his car. He finished the mural in two and a half days. A brief conversation afterward changed how Allen thought about what she was building. “I just realized that artists love to paint. They want their work out there, and they love giving back to the communities.” If an artist of that caliber would come that far for that little, the idea was sound. “I just had this moment where I was like, wow, this is big.”

Covid arrived the following year, limiting the festival to six murals. But by the fourth year, Allen says, something had shifted. The website was new, the logo was new, the applications were coming in from artists with international reputations. What had begun as an experiment was becoming an institution.

The hardest part, then and now, has never been finding artists. “The biggest hurdle has always been, every year it still is, is finding the walls.” Property owners in 2018 were skeptical in a particular way. “There was that whole, I don’t want graffiti on my wall. That’s what people honestly thought we were doing.” Allen spent considerable energy educating owners on the difference between a festival project and a commission — explaining that artists were giving something to the community, that artistic freedom was part of the exchange, but even then that the result would not look like what they feared. The education worked. “We’ve never had one property owner do it and then say, oh, I wish I hadn’t done that.”

That education also involved helping property owners understand what they were and weren’t agreeing to. The pairing of artist and wall is something Allen takes seriously—matching the right sensibility to the right space, finding the synergy between an artist’s vision and a building’s character. Property owners can offer input, and most artists are willing to listen. But the festival’s value to artists depends on creative latitude. “We want to let the artist have as much artistic freedom as possible. This is going in their portfolio. It’s helping boost their career.”

The agreement for the mural is for three years. After that, happens to a mural is largely up to the property owner. The festival has lost a handful of works over the years, including two on a building that was repainted in a full redesign. The most complicated case was the Bicycle Collective wall, where an organic community mural had accumulated over time. “I was very, very aware of that, and very concerned about how people would feel about it,” she says. New owners were going to paint the wall over anyway. She consulted local artists beforehand. The consensus: art’s temporary, and the wall was going to be painted anyway.

Katie Green’s mural in progress outside Material Gallery, 2970 S. West Temple. You’ll find her easel work inside the gallery through May 22.

Sign painter Shley’s mural going up at 2720 S W Temple St, South Salt Lake.

The festival has grown in nearly every measurable way. Early on, artists supplied their own equipment—”they were on ladders,” Allen notes. Now the festival provides lifts, accommodations, and per diems. Pay has become competitive by the standards of mural festivals nationally. Eccles Foundation, Rocky Mountain Power, and Sunbelt—which donates lift equipment—have joined the city as supporters. Allen set an early goal of ten murals a year for ten years. “Which, if you think about it, is really crazy,” she says. “But we’re about there.”

Asked whether the energy has held, she answers honestly. “I think it has maybe plateaued a little bit, because people know about it now, but it’s still really high.” But she’s quick to add context. “There are a lot of mural festivals out there that start out, they go for two or three years, and then you never hear of them again. You google their website and they’re gone. So I’m really proud that it’s lasted this long.”

What Allen would tell someone starting a similar festival today is less about logistics than about identity. Other mural festivals exist, and it’s tempting to model yours on the most successful ones. But the lesson she learned is that the model has to fit the place. “You can learn from other models, but you’re never going to be exactly like this other festival in X town. You have to do what works for your community.”

Lesly Allen with mural artist Mantra in front of his mural at 2400 S. Main in 2024.

What has lasted, Allen says, is something that doesn’t show up in any mural count. When asked what she would fight to preserve if the budget disappeared, she doesn’t mention the walls. She talks about what happens around them.”For me, what has been so special is seeing the social capital that’s built through the process.” Mural artists, she explains, typically work alone. Festivals give them each other. “They love getting together. They get to interact and learn from each other.” And then there are the moments between artists and the neighborhoods they’re painting: property owners taking their assigned artists up the canyons or out to the Great Salt Lake, children stopping on the sidewalk to watch someone paint the side of a building. “Who gets to do that?” Allen says. “That, to me, is the coolest part of the whole thing.”

Mural Fest 2026 is Saturday, May 9, 2-8 pm.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.