For years, Armando Silva traveled to mural festivals across Colorado and watched what happened when artists showed up and got to work. The conversations that started on lifts and sidewalks. The way strangers stopped to watch and ended up staying for an hour. The way a wall—just a wall—could become a reason for a neighborhood to feel like itself.
He kept thinking: What would that look like in Greeley?
That question became WeldWalls. And what started as a back-burner idea between two friends has grown into one of downtown Greeley's most anticipated events of the year.
Armando and co-founder Briana Harris have known each other for nearly a decade—he as a visual artist, she as a musician and artist manager. Both had watched Greeley's creative community quietly do remarkable things without always getting the credit. Both had built relationships with artists across the state who, they suspected, would love a reason to come paint here.
As Armando remembers it, the idea began with a simple question: "We were trying to take inventory of what we had. How can we pay it forward?"
In 2023, a one-time city grant gave them the seed money to find out. They called the festival WeldWalls, recruited a mix of local and out-of-town artists, partnered with WeldWerks Brewing Company as their first host site, and pulled it off. The following year they expanded into other sites in downtown Greeley. This fall, the festival moves to 16th Street, adjacent to UNC's campus, with a new theme: Homecoming.
The format sounds simple—artists come, artists paint—but WeldWalls condenses months of planning into six days. To pull that off, Briana and Armando handle nearly everything that isn't the actual painting: securing walls, coordinating equipment, prepping surfaces, and making sure artists can focus on the work.
Artists propose their own designs in advance and are given wide creative latitude to respond to the festival's theme. Rather than approaching each mural like a traditional client project, WeldWalls works to thoughtfully match artists, locations, and themes in ways that encourage creative freedom while building support from property owners and the community. Once those relationships are established, the organizers focus on creating the conditions for artists to do their best work.
Giving artists that freedom is intentional. "A lot of magic happens that way," Briana said. "We get much more interesting results than if we were strictly dictating what someone paints."
What neither of them fully anticipated was what the festival would become around the murals.
In WeldWalls' first year, a community mural at WeldWerks invited anyone to pick up a brush and contribute. What Briana expected to be a modest activity turned into one of the weekend's most memorable moments—participants ranging from toddlers to grandparents, everyone painting side by side. It was the kind of thing that's hard to plan for and impossible to manufacture.
Visual art can be an isolating pursuit. Days are spent alone in studios, working toward finished pieces that people may glance at and walk past. WeldWalls flips that dynamic for one week a year. Artists are visible, accessible, and in conversation with each other and the public. Emerging artists work alongside established professionals. Community members stop to ask questions. Kids watch something come to life in front of them and pick up a brush themselves.
Last year, the festival added a pop-up art show, inviting artists from across the region to submit work. Artists drove in from Denver and Fort Collins. Professionals showed up alongside hobbyists who had never exhibited their work publicly.
Looking back, Briana believes the event created something bigger than another art show. "We were really just facilitating a space for them to find each other."
Artists found collaborators. New friendships formed. Conversations that started during festival week continued long after the murals were finished.
That sense of connection has become one of the defining characteristics of WeldWalls.
Briana is quick to point out that WeldWalls is only one chapter in a much larger story. "Our city has had a long history of organizers championing public art," she said. "Our festival exists because of the foundation that came before us; we hope what we're doing makes that legacy more visible to others."
From longtime mural programs and public art initiatives to the artists, organizations, business owners, and volunteers who have invested in creative placemaking over the years, WeldWalls builds on a tradition that has helped shape downtown Greeley into the vibrant cultural district it is today.
The murals may be what people notice first—the color, the scale, the transformation of a blank wall into something impossible to ignore. But ask Armando or Briana what they're proudest of, and they'll probably tell you about a two-year-old with a paintbrush, or two artists from different cities who met on a sidewalk in Greeley and kept in touch.
That's the whole point.
Not simply painting walls, but creating reasons for people to gather around them.
Paint it forward.
2026 Event Details
WeldWalls Mural Festival 2026
Sept. 15-19, 16th St., Downtown Greeley
Featured Artists:
Samuel O. Dong Saul
Birdcap
Shannon Mack
Carson the Artist
Casey Kawaguchi
Lares Feliciano
Cora Eastman
Macey Boren
Details and full schedule at weldwalls.com.