"I remember sitting in our classrooms in Lakeland and saying, 'I'm going to have to leave if I want to pursue art,'" Gillian Fazio told LkldNow. Fazio grew up in Lakeland and has run her mural practice here for nearly a decade. Her butterflies and botanicals show up all over town, from Lake Mirror to Dixieland. This week she and Katerina Santos, who paints as TRATOS and moved to Lakeland in 2023, are running the city's first mural festival.
Color Wave Walls officially runs November 6 through 14. Saturday's closing celebration ends the festival week, but it doesn't end the murals. Eleven walls are getting new work, and the organizers plan to bring the festival back every two years. Fazio told LkldNow the gap is meant to let the community absorb the pieces, "much like a museum exhibition." So this route is the festival's whole collection until the next round. It also covers more ground than the Munn Park and Lake Mirror blocks most downtown evenings stick to.
Eleven Walls, Picked From 438 Applications
The 11 artists were chosen from 438 applications sent from 33 states and 21 countries, Polk Arts reported. That works out to about one spot for every 40 applicants. A panel of community leaders picked the roster.
Five of the artists are from Florida, and one is from Polk County: Keith Goodson of Auburndale. The other six came from Atlanta, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada and France, according to the 6AM City festival guide.
Organizers have pitched the festival as more than decoration from the start. "What we're trying to do here is make people want to spend more time in our local businesses, buy a coffee, walk the walls, and spend time in our local community," Fazio told LkldNow. The wall locations follow that plan. They sit on a flower shop, a comedy venue, an insurance office, a bank building and a university's downtown site, so a walk past all 11 takes you by a good share of downtown's working storefronts.
The Route, Leg by Leg
The legs below group the walls by address. Live painting runs November 4 through 18 under the festival's official announcement, so a walk this week means watching some murals while they're still being painted.
North Massachusetts and North Florida
This is the leg that stretches the walk the farthest north. Assignments come from the 6AM City guide.
- Nina Valkhoff, Netherlands: Haus 820 south wall, 820 N. Massachusetts Ave.
- Bublegum, Spain: Traders Building, 701 N. Florida Ave.
- Naomi Haverland, Orlando: Comedy Cathedral, 417 N. Massachusetts Ave.
- Steven Teller, St. Augustine: Herring Building east wall, 316 E. Pine St.
- Kitsune Jolene, Australia: Traders Alley west wall, 236 N. Massachusetts Ave.
Haus 820 sits at the far north end of the route, and it also hosts tonight's artist talk, covered below. Traders Alley already has murals, which a 2020 Lakeland Mom guide listed off North Kentucky Avenue, so Kitsune Jolene's wall joins an alley that was painted before.
Along the Tracks on North Kentucky
- Reinier Gamboa, Miami: north wall near the train tracks, 202 N. Kentucky Ave.
- Mwanel Pierre-Louis, Miami: Cedar Street south wall, 201 N. Kentucky Ave.
These two face each other across the 200 block of North Kentucky. The community mural is on Cedar Street across from Notta Gallery, so this is the leg where you can pick up a brush yourself on Saturday.
The Core and South of Main
- Temponok, France: Truist Building north wall, 114 N. Tennessee Ave.
- Keith Goodson, Auburndale: SEU Downtown east wall, 101 W. Main St.
- Greg Mike, Atlanta: Flowers by Edith south wall, 229 S. Florida Ave.
- Megan Oldhues, Canada: HUB Insurance north wall, 309 S. Tennessee Ave.
The southern leg ends at HUB Insurance on South Tennessee. That's about a dozen blocks of street numbers south of where the route started at 820 N. Massachusetts.
Where the New Walls Meet the Old Ones
Color Wave adds to the art downtown already has. Fazio's Monarch butterfly mural already overlooks Lake Mirror, and Santos has a TRATOS mural on the outside of the Lloyd's of Lakeland building, LkldNow reported. So both founders' own work is a short walk from the festival walls.
The city also runs a Downtown Public Art Trail, a GPS-enabled route you can start anywhere. It covers public art from Lake Mirror to Lake Beulah. The city's StoryMap lists works along that trail, including "Tribute to the Volunteer Spirit," "Crocodilis Imperious" and "Mute Swan Protecting Her Cygnets" at Lake Mirror, the "Romero Britto Swan" in Munn Park, and the Florida Outdoor Sculpture Competition pieces on Lemon Street. The Truist and SEU Downtown walls are near Munn Park, so one afternoon walk can easily cover both the sculpture trail and the new murals.
The festival comes as city arts funding has grown. In 2017 the City of Lakeland, through the Mayor's Council on the Arts, set aside $250,000 in grants for the arts community. That allocation is now $375,000, a 50% increase in under a decade, LkldNow reported. That's citywide arts money, not a festival grant. Donations to Color Wave itself go through a fund at GiveWell Community Foundation, which pays for artist compensation, materials, lifts and community engagement.
What's Left on the Festival Calendar
The festival has three days left, and two of them have public events.
| Date | Event | Time | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, Nov. 12 | Wave Maker Artist Talk | 5–9 p.m. | Haus 820, 820 N. Massachusetts Ave. |
| Saturday, Nov. 14 | Community mural, during the Downtown Farmers Curb Market | 8 a.m.–2 p.m. | Cedar Street, across from Notta Gallery |
| Saturday, Nov. 14 | Closing celebration |
Tonight's artist talk has small bites and hands-on art activities, and the muralists will be there to meet. On Saturday the community mural shares the morning with the Downtown Farmers Curb Market, which has local produce, plants, food and handmade goods. For festival updates, check Color Wave Walls and the festival's Instagram.
Before You Set Out
Paper festival maps are available at the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority office, Black & Brew, City Hall and Parlor Doughnuts. Picking one up at Black & Brew or Parlor Doughnuts gets you a coffee for the walk too, which is exactly what Fazio said she hoped people would do.
The city says downtown street parking and city garages are free on weekends, after 5 p.m. on weekdays, and on city holidays. So Thursday evening's talk and Saturday morning's market both fall in free-parking hours. If you start on Saturday, try parking near the community mural on Cedar Street. From there, North Kentucky puts you between the Haus 820 end of the route and the Munn Park end.
For more about downtown, our Lakeland neighborhood page covers the area, and our look at downtown's long-delayed tiki bar follows other recent changes in the same blocks.
The team at Engel & Völkers Lakeland lives and works around these same streets, and we'll be watching how the new walls settle into downtown over the next two years. If you own a home nearby and want to know where it stands in today's Lakeland market, we're happy to prepare a free home valuation.
