About Public Art by ~buffy

While mural work was an important starting point for me beginning in 2018, my practice expanded beyond walls and sidewalks in 2020 into what I think of as mural-adjacent public art.

I created a separate website for Public Art because not public art is a mural and not all murals are public.

I’m drawn to public art because, like murals, it can transform an ordinary surface, catch the eye, invite interaction, or create a moment of surprise in an everyday setting.

Whether permanent, temporary, movable, painted, or digitally produced for installation, I see public art as an opportunity to shape atmosphere, invite discovery, and contribute something memorable to the spaces we share.

Public art is one of the ways I bring visual storytelling into shared space—out of the studio and into the environments people move through every day.

While mural work was an important starting point for me beginning in 2018, my practice expanded beyond walls in 2020 into what I think of as mural-adjacent public art.

I created a separate website for Public Art because not all murals are public, and not all public art is a mural.

I’m drawn to public art because it can transform an ordinary surface, catch the eye, invite interaction, or create a moment of surprise in an everyday setting.

Whether permanent, temporary, movable, painted, or digitally produced for installation, I see public art as an opportunity to shape atmosphere, invite discovery, and contribute something memorable to the spaces we share.

Public art is one of the ways I bring visual storytelling into shared space—out of the studio and into the environments people move through every day.

Public art can take many forms, including chalk drawings, painted rock surfaces, boarded-over windows, movable mural installations, digital designs translated into large-scale public wraps, and other forms of site-responsive public work.

Some of these pieces are temporary, some are mobile, some are installed, and some are created for community engagement. Others are simply meant to add delight, curiosity, play, or visual energy to a shared environment.

Some pieces are informed by story or place, while others are created simply to delight, engage, or bring an unexpected moment of visual interest to a shared environment.

My skillset is not limited to a single medium or the substrate it’s created on.

The Canvas

Around that same period, my work was also expanding in other public-facing directions. In 2020, I began painting on boarded windows in Raleigh—creating removable mural work on plywood during a time when many storefronts were temporarily covered.

In 2021, that path widened again when I first began public chalk art at an event at an Employee Appreciation Event at Elon University in Burlington, North Carolina, working as part of a team with and for another mural artist. From there, I continued into additional chalk commissions and event-based chalk drawings later that year. Chalk brought in another layer of impermanence and interaction—art that could meet people directly underfoot, surprise them in passing, and exist fully in the moment.

Looking back, that path really was part preparation, part opportunity. I was making, experimenting, sharing, and learning before I knew exactly where it would lead. The opportunities that followed did not arrive in isolation—they grew out of the work already in motion, the skills I was building, and the decision to keep creating in visible, public-facing ways even when the future felt uncertain.

The next opportunity came through a recommendation from another artist friend. She had been seeing my Quarantine Creations on social media and immediately connected what I was already doing to a project her friend Jennifer had been looking for help with. That referral led to a Spirit Rock commission at Jennifer’s son’s school—a temporary, community-facing collaboration.

After the recommendation, Jennifer visited my socials, where she found my Quarantine Creations, painted rock garden, and memorial marker, and asked me to collaborate with her and her son. She served on a school committee and hoped the painted boulder would spark interest among other school families, encouraging it to be repainted month after month in new ways.

That Spirit Rock commission which I've titled: "Shared Spirit" was my first step toward mural-adjacent public art in my practice.

That season of creating led to my first rock-related commissions. One came from a neighbor after her dog passed away. I painted a memorial stone featuring both her dogs together, looking toward the rainbow bridge that one had crossed and the other would one day cross too.

I also began placing more of the painted rocks around my neighborhood and in a mulched area by my driveway. Over time, that became what I started calling my painted rock garden. A couple of neighbors noticed my name on the backs of rocks I had placed locally, stopped to chat when I was out gardening one day, and then saw the growing collection. They loved them and even chose favorites to place in their own gardens.

In 2020, opportunities still came knocking despite social distancing.

At the time, I was painting rocks—my “Quarantine Creations”—and sharing them on social media. What began as a way to keep creating during quarantine became something more. I was using the supplies I already had on hand when stores were closed, finding a way to stay connected through art while much of the world felt paused, and showing people what I was capable of doing. Even though I wasn’t selling the rocks I was creating reels, stories, and posts from them that helped me build my skills while also showing others that if I could paint these, I could likely paint what they had in mind.

As I painted, I began placing some of the rocks in public spaces for people to find, similar to kindness rocks. I painted my artist name, website, and social handles on the bottom, hoping people might keep them, photograph them, tag me, or even place them somewhere else for others to discover.

My first opportunity and exposure to a form of public art came through live painting on canvas at IMURJ, a collaborative art space in downtown Raleigh. Beginning April 30, 2019, owner Karl Thor invited me to paint as the pop-up artist during Lively Lunches, their live-streamed live painting series, where the process of creating in real time became part of the public experience itself. I was blessed to be asked to continue as a pop-up artist for several months until I had to pause for holidays and a busy travel schedule only to return at the beginning of Covid, which itself paused all live events, including this one.