Kernersville artist seeks solution for downtown mural festival

Yahoo

12-06-2025

The organizer of last month's Kernersville Mural Festival might not be able to follow it up as planned with another mural event in November because of the town's sign regulations and a related loss of funding.
Last August, local artist Christina Parrish started planning for the festival and estimated that she would have to raise $80,000 to complete first festival, coinciding with Spring Folly in early May, as well as a follow-up event in November. Her goal was to have artists to paint murals on 14 spaces throughout downtown Kernersville.
Parrish crowdsourced funding, partnered with the Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County, and got some business sponsors for the project.
'Everything was going well with fundraising, and I got three or four business donors that contributed to the event, and moving into the week of the event, we had five murals fully funded,' Parrish said.
Parrish said the murals had to comply with the town of Kernersville's sign ordinance, and she met with town staff to review the designs to ensure that the murals were in line.
Parrish said the town employees advised omitting any business names and products.
'The week of the mural festival and I sent them the location, sizes, the artists, and the sponsors of the five mural spaces,' Parrish said.
That week, Parrish was notified that she was not allowed to include sponsor names on the murals because they would be considered off-premises signs.
Off-premises signs can be defined as any sign that indicates direction to, advertises or otherwise identifies any property, structure or use not on the same property as the sign.
'I had to call all of the business-level sponsors and let them know that we couldn't give them public attribution of their funding for these murals, and I had $17,000 worth of sponsorships back out. Two of the murals that would have gone up on May 2 are on hold,' Parrish said, and currently there are just three murals.
Parrish said that without the business-level mural sponsorships, funding the rest of the project will be a challenge.
'We will need to raise approximately $68,000 for all remaining 11 murals to be painted. That gives 5% of all funds raised to ... the Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County, and 95% to the artists, which equals to $35 dollars per square foot that is painted. I'm an advocate for getting artists paid what they deserve, so if we don't get the funding, the result is simple. We just won't be able to add the murals,' Parrish said.
Parrish attended the Kernersville Board of Aldermen meeting on May 28 to seek a resolution that would allow business-level sponsors to receive recognition.
Town Manager Curtis Swisher gave the board options: to leave the Unified Development Ordinance as is and proceed without sponsors, to use town funds to pay for the murals as a public art project, to change the off-premises sign ordinance, or consult with an outside legal counsel on the issue.
The discussion about the Kernersville Mural Festival will be revisited during the board's meeting on Aug. 5.
Parrish said Phase 2 of the mural festival is still scheduled regardless of the decision made by the board.
'I'm still accepting donations for it to happen (but) if I don't get any further donations, no further murals will be able to be painted. Should they decide to work something out where private business-level sponsors are able to be recognized for their donations to the town, we will immediately have the funding for about three more murals,' Parrish said.