Visit WilCo, the visitors and tourism page for Wilson County, has successfully joined the exciting world of mural art. Paint WilCo is an art initiative with the goals of integrating art into communities, boosting tourism and providing more beauty throughout Wilson County. Kaitlyn Vail, one of the many artists involved in Paint Wilco, tells us more about the organization and what’s in store for the future.
Q: Who and what is Paint Wilco?
A: Paint WilCo is a murals initiative developed by the Wilson County Convention & Visitor’s Bureau with the intentions of beautifying Wilson County while increasing the overall interest in art throughout the community. Because of this initiative, we were also able to achieve the Tennessee ThreeStar certification for the county (a strategic community development program developed to assist communities in preparing for a better future).
Q: Was your goal of completing 10 murals throughout Wilson County in 2020 reached?
A: Due to navigating through unforeseen circumstances that COVID-19 brought, we were short of our goal in 2020. However, this year we have reached that goal and hit the ground running to continue to have success.
Q: Where can the murals be found?
A: Our murals can be located here: https://www.visitwilco.com/map-locations/ as well as a Google Earth interactive tour.
Q: Are all the artists consistently the same or do you ever feature guest artists to collaborate with?
A: The beauty of this initiative is that we get to have a sample of many different artist stylings throughout the county. Which you can see the different art styles and the various artists throughout our current murals. We love the unique individuality each artist brings into the mural, to make it their own personal touch to Wilson County.
Q: Who makes the initial contact for establishing a mural’s location? Do you reach out to businesses or them to you?
A: We have a mixture of both. As this initiative has taken off, we have been able to grow organically allowing interest to come to us as we help guide their vision. We do sometimes receive a grant for a certain project where we will reach out to where we think would be the perfect fit. It’s all about being flexible, looking for opportunity and being ready to receive when the chance comes to us! As Paint WilCo grows, we continue to receive interest in future mural projects with many more murals to come to the county in the upcoming months
Q: What kind of impact do you hope the murals make on the community and its people?
A: We want to help bring attention to the arts and inspire art for others, while creating “Instagramable” moments. We want to encourage others to discover what the community has to offer, while they are exploring our Paint WilCo murals.
Make sure to follow Paint Wilco to stay up to date on future projects and ways to be involved here.
