For Birmingham artist Yogi Dada, the wall she is preparing to paint is a new kind of space. She has spent years making work across visual and wearable art, film, poetry, music and writing, but Yonder Walls will be her first mural. The project, part of an inaugural public-art festival in the city’s Parkside District, puts her work outside a studio and into a place residents can encounter together. It also follows a long pause in painting and drawing, which she told The Birmingham Times lasted 17 years.
Yonder Walls has scheduled its free festival for Oct. 17, from noon to 8 p.m., at Urban Supply. The organizer says artists are painting from Oct. 12 through Oct. 16, with the festival day bringing music, food trucks, local vendors and a family fun zone. The event is designed to bring Alabama artists and visiting artists into the same public-art project. Its website describes paid artist opportunities and lists mentorship for emerging creators among the organization’s goals.
Dada grew up in upstate New York and moved to Alabama at 18, the Times reported. She earned an art degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and developed work across multiple forms, including hand-painted wooden earrings and film. The paper reported that criticism of her colorful style helped lead her to step away from painting and drawing for 17 years. During that period she worked as an optician while exploring other outlets. She returned to painting during her mother’s illness, then built a business around hand-painted earrings. Her film “GRAFFICA” won Best Feature Film in the Black Lens category at the 2021 Sidewalk Film Festival.
The piece is titled “For Da People.” Dada plans to use vibrant imagery and invite residents to add handprints, making participation part of the design. She told the Times the interactive element is meant to let people become part of the mural’s creation. The project is one of several personal stories being prepared for Parkside’s walls, where residents will be able to see the work take shape before the Oct. 17 gathering.
The festival’s organizers say the goal is to make room for artists who have not had access to large public walls. Rachel “Levi” Levinson, a Yonder Walls co-director, told the Times that 35 percent of participating artists are first-time muralists. That includes artists with established practices in other media, as well as people stepping into a public commission at this scale for the first time. The organizer’s site calls the opportunity paid and lists mentorship among its goals.
Pay and creative control are central to that approach. In the Times report, Levinson described the project as a way to compensate artists and let them make work from their own ideas. Artists submitted renderings to help organizers plan wall placement and coordinate the overall layout, but the report says they keep creative control over their designs. The festival presents mural-making as paid professional work, rather than a request for artists to contribute only for exposure.
Yonder Walls has also created a smaller-scale way for artists to participate. The Times reported that its “Decks and Cans” show featured artists painting custom skateboards and spray-paint cans, with donations divided between participating artists and the nonprofit. Levinson recalled discovering that a teacher and one of her students had both been selected without knowing the other had applied. The example shows the festival’s effort to connect artists across experience levels, not only to commission work for the walls.
Yonder Walls says it hopes the inaugural festival will lead to year-round workshops, creative meetups, panel discussions, mentorship and youth activities. Organizers also told the Times they want to help artists navigate contracts, pricing and protecting their work. The plans show how the team wants the event to extend beyond one weekend and a set of murals, creating more ways for artists to build skills and find paid opportunities.
Residents can watch the work progress during the week and attend the free festival Saturday, Oct. 17, at Urban Supply in downtown Birmingham’s Parkside District. The event page lists the hours as noon to 8 p.m. and describes music, vendors, food trucks and a family fun zone. For Dada, the mural is a first public wall after years of making art elsewhere; for the organizers, it is part of an effort to give Birmingham artists more room and support to tell their own stories.
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