
Bringing Art to Community
Inaugural mural festival heads to Traverse City in September
By Ellen Miller | July 26, 2025
With the beauty of the coastline front and center, you could be forgiven for not knowing that Traverse City has a robust public arts scene. Walk around town, though, and you’ll be met with a rich artistic experience, from gallery walls to public art on buildings to TART Trail sculptures.
This year, six artists will participate in Traverse City’s first Mural Festival, happening Sept. 12-17, 2025. The festival, run by the Traverse City Arts Commission, is part of the North Boardman Creative Initiative, a placemaking effort in the North Boardman Lake District (NoBo). The idea stemmed from the Healthy Eighth Street Initiative; some of the community input from those community conversations was specific to art and visual placemaking and the identity of the neighborhood.
“I serve on the Arts Commission and knew about that study. It felt like a great opportunity, where so much community engagement and input had already taken place,” says Caitlin Early. The Mural Festival has its roots in those community conversations, and Early and the rest of the Arts Commission hope that it will become an every two year event.
From a Hundred to Six
Over 100 artists submitted a response to the Arts Commission’s call for proposals. “It was overwhelmingly the most responses we ever received!” says Early of other public art calls.
Two of the selected artists call the Traverse City area home; another two are from Michigan; and the final two are from further afield (one from California and one from an artists’ collective from Ontario).
“Based on the study and input, we wanted to explore themes related to water access, multi-modal transportation, walkability, and flora and fauna in the lake and watershed, so we were looking for visually compelling responses to those thematic areas. We narrowed it down to 13, and then asked for specific proposals and concepts from those artists,” Early explains. “It was an hours-long deliberation process.”
The six artists coming in September will create (and complete) original works on buildings in the district. Community volunteers will help prepare spaces and get everything set up for the artists.
Stay tuned for specific events throughout the Mural Festival, including a kickoff happy hour in coordination with a gallery opening at Commongrounds. There will also be an artists panel talk at The Alluvion, a participatory art project for youth, and a parade throughout the area where the murals will be installed, starting at Oryana, walking along Eighth Street, and ending at the Filling Station. “We hope people will walk along and come hear the artists talk,” says Early.
The Local: Meet Nik Burkhart
Nik Burkhart is originally from Brutus (a little north of Petoskey) and went to school K-12 at Pellston Public Schools. He moved away to Holland to study art at Hope College and then worked in Chicago, before moving back to northern Michigan four years ago to be near family. He shows his artwork year-round at the V Gallery in Omena.
Two of Burkhart’s largest commissions early on in his career were murals for the City of Petoskey at both the Emmet County Fairgrounds and the Petoskey Public Library. He also has a mural just north of Traverse City at the Fouch Road trailhead on the TART.
“I am excited about the vision of the mural festival and how it aims to bring creativity into the public domain,” says Burkhart. “My painting style is currently trending toward more representational subject matter, but I often use abstraction to give expressiveness and mystery to my compositions.
“Most of my art incorporates elements of landscape or natural forms—water, sky, trees, plants, etc.—and I often paint directly on wood to use the wood grain in the final artwork. I typically have a fairly limited palette, often simple black and white, to give it a more contemplative or classical feel. My mural for the festival will celebrate the work of local farmers—particularly fruit growers—and what they contribute to the flourishing of our region.”
The Michigander: Meet Eddie Chaffer
Eddie Chaffer (painting as Son Visual) is a Michigan community organizer and traveling muralist. Their mural work is inspired by hyper-local environmental themes (jackrabbits in Joshua Tree, mangroves in Key West, sturgeon in Lake Michigan) that connect communities to their ecological landscape. By amplifying stories of biodiversity, conservation, and cultural heritage through the universal language of public art, they aim to inspire widespread ecologic literacy. Chaffer is also the founder and director of the Pleasant Peninsula Mural Festival—a fest dedicated to environmental education through public art.
Chaffer has been doing murals full time for five years, and apprenticed for about two years before that. Chaffer’s style is “a mashup of ecology and surrealism” and they will be thinking about the pre-glacier Paleozoic Sea at the Mural Festival. “I look to a certain ecosystem for inspiration, and then use the stories already present in that landscape to comment on broader ideas like spirituality, alchemy, queerness, grief, and the esoteric,” they explain.
“I applied to the Traverse City fest because I love the land!” Chaffer concludes. “I have had many life-changing sunsets in Sleeping Bear, and am always learning something new about the Paleozoic Sea that once covered this landscape. With my work with the Pleasant Peninsula Mural Festival, I’ve kind of become a professional Michigander. I’m so excited to be able to install another mural that highlights Michigan’s globally unique ecology and geologic history.”
The Californian: Meet Daisuke Okamoto
Daisuke Okamoto is a Los Angeles-based artist and muralist, originally from Tokyo.
He has been working as a professional muralist since 2016. One of his main goals in creating murals and art is rooted in his strong belief that art has the power to change the world. Okamoto’s murals can be found across the United States—in California, Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and New York—as well as internationally in Tokyo and Berlin.
“Murals can transform cities and towns into open-air galleries, becoming landmarks and leaving a lasting legacy,” Okamoto says. “The power of art can deliver impactful messages to both local communities and visitors. By placing a mural or artwork in a space, it can completely transform the environment. I have always aspired to be part of this kind of creative and transformative work, so it is truly an honor to contribute my art to the Traverse City Mural Festival.”
At the Mural Festival, Okamoto aims to create an artwork that captures the energy of the people, the beauty of Traverse City, its local culture, and a sense of connection. “I hope the piece will make people stop in their tracks, encouraging them to pause and engage with artwork that reflects their community,” he says. “I’m very excited to participate in this year’s Traverse City Mural Festival and look forward to meeting all of you and the wonderful people of Traverse City.”
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