Introducing muralista Phyl Francis

I didn’t go on a tour for a while after that. In 2006, my husband passed away and I spent a long time recovering from that. I still had my business, but I felt there was this huge hole in my daily life, that I needed something that could be very meaningful, that I could really throw myself into. It just so happened that they were almost ready to close the Mural Arts guide training class for March 2009 and I got in right under the wire to take that training.

I could talk about Mural Arts to everybody. I tell everyone I know, you have got to come into the city and go on a Mural Arts tour, you just have to! Tourists and residents alike are blown away by the beauty of the murals themselves. I’ve had so many people on tours who actually work or live in the city and they will say, I walk by this mural every day, my office is across the street, but I never paid attention to it because I never knew the story of the mural. From a beauty standpoint, it’s got a real wow effect, but when you talk about the meaning and the impact of what that project did for the community it serves, especially projects connected to programs like Porch Light or Restorative Justice, tour takers are just so impressed by the process and also the fact that we have been able to create so many works of art in a short amount of time. We’re almost at 4,000 murals in 33 years. And people still want us to do things, they still want us to create works of art to tell their story.

Every tour guide feels very committed because we as a group feel and believe that we are the public face of Mural Arts. We’re the ones who take strangers to our city and show them the murals and tell them the stories. There isn’t one of us who isn’t totally dedicated to this program.

And I think we do it because we all feel the way we do about Mural Arts. We want to do everything we can to make it great – well, great-er. It’s already pretty great.

Being a Mural Arts tour guide has given me something to be passionate about, even though I’m not a good artist – I can’t even draw a good stick figure! Mural Arts has done so much for so many, bringing people together that likely never would have had a chance or wanted to get to know others aren’t necessarily like them. And that’s amazing.