Brady & Alex + Community (website, Instagram)
Location: Alley on Blanchard between 2nd & 3rd
Artist Statement 
(click to listen to the description)
This is where the artist statement is written
More information (click to listen to the description)
Down a Belltown alley that doesn’t always invite you in, something quietly remarkable is painted on the wall. The community mural by artists Alex and Brady is different from every other work in the Belltown Mural Festival — not just in how it looks, but fundamentally in how it came to exist.
The bottom eight feet of this wall were painted by the community. Neighbors, families, festival visitors — ordinary people who showed up and put paint on a wall that belongs, in every meaningful sense, to all of them. Alex and Brady are clear that this wasn’t a Tom Sawyer situation, recruiting unpaid helpers. The point was ownership. Most of us move through our cities as passive recipients, accepting the buildings, signage, and spaces imposed around us without ever being asked. Picking up a brush and painting your city changes that relationship permanently.
The mural draws on Brady’s signature collage-and-ephemera visual style, layered with cultural references and a deep tie to place — including text drawn from a poem by a local writer. Alex brought her own complementary aesthetic to the collaboration, and the two spent days in creative dialogue before a single stroke went on the wall.
Yes, the artists did touch-ups after the community sessions. That’s entirely the point. The finished image matters, but the real meaning lives in the process — in the neighbor who’ll walk past next month and say I painted that.
Back to the Belltown Murals: map, overview web page