MURALS BRING NEW LIFE TO WORCESTER

Photo by Joe Gonzalez-Dufresne

Worcester is becoming a lot more colorful thanks to a growing group of mural artists in town. It’s now more and more common to see large, brightly colored works of public art on walls and buildings that were formerly void of any sort of pizazz or life. 

Last month, we talked to Ryan Gardell of Artifakt Studios, who is making his name known with large murals like the one he created in 2017 on Coney Island in conjunction with POW! WOW! Worcester. POW! WOW! Worcester, an arts festival that is part of a worldwide arts initiative network has continued to embrace local artists and has most recently enlisted the talents of Travis Duda and Eamon Gillen to beautify our area.

“There’s just something about public art that is really enchanting, the idea that we’re taking art out of museums and putting it on the street and making it really accessible to all people, that truly appeals to me,” says Duda, a graphic designer at Hunchback Graphics, a company he founded. Duda has also been a board member of POW! WOW! Worcester for three years, helping with the annual arts festival.

“I’ve been working with POW! WOW! Worcester and watching those artists for the past few years and they kind of shed some light on the whole way it’s done and took out the mystery,” says Duda. “It went from something that was kind of scary and intimidating to ‘Oh yeah, I can actually kind of do this.’”