al street art festival created to brighten up
the city’s neighborhoods with a creative
vitality that makes both locals and tourists
see Sacramento in a new light. This year’s
festival, from Aug. 9–19, will bring 30 art-
ists from the city and beyond to this event,
which includes gallery openings, art tours,
fundraisers and, of course, the chance for
spectators to watch artists work on a big
scale.
David Sobon, the founder of Wide
Open Walls mural festival.
“There’s a sense of pride everybody
feels when they look at these fantastic
murals,” says David Sobon, the festi-
val’s founder and producer. “We’ve made
downtown Sacramento an outdoor art gal-
lery that rivals the Mission District in San
Francisco.”
Sobon worked with several PBIDs,
including The River District, Midtown
Business Association, Power Inn Alliance,
Downtown Sacramento Partnership and
others.
“WOW epitomizes the concept of
placemaking by generating buzz and
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encouraging the culture that makes us
uniquely Sacramento,” says Emilie Cam-
eron, public affairs and communications
director for DSP, which will be supporting
the festival again this year with a new mu-
ral inspired by six-word stories submitted
during State of Downtown in January.
In addition to some districts putting up
banners and promoting the event on social
media, Sobon says the districts all contrib-
uted to help raise the $400,000 needed
for last year’s festival. This year, the bud-
get has increased to over $500,000 to
include a live concert block party and in-
creased stipends to the artists.
“Wide Open Walls is the exact defini-
tion of a public-private partnership,” So-
bon says. “Without collaboration there’s
no way this little nonprofit can do it all by
itself.”
This year, street-art entrepreneur
Shepard Fairey will be adapting Jim Mar-
shall’s classic photo of Johnny Cash for
a mural on the Marriott’s Residence Inn
downtown, a tribute to the 50th anniver-
sary of the country icon’s Folsom Prison
concert. The image might not spike the
number of hotel guests, but guests who do
come won’t forget it when they see it, says
Doug Warren, regional director of opera-
tions for Welcome Group, which oversees
five Marriott-branded hotels in California.
“Once you leave, you go back to your
town and talk about this mural,” Warren
says. “The return on investment is social
capital.”
When Sobon was first pitching the
WOW idea, Mike Testa, head of the Visit
Sacramento tourism agency, was cautious
not to get too excited because he says
most pitches he receives never come to
fruition. But everything changed after last
year’s event. Testa’s office building now
features a mural painted by Sacramento
artist Maren Conrad, inspired by “Lady
Bird”, the 2017 Oscar-nominated film set
in Sacramento.
“I had no idea of the impact until I saw
those murals go up in the first festival,”
says Testa, whose organization is return-
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