Tampa Bay ToursThis tour company was founded in 2005 by Lonnie Herman, a longtime Tampa resident who eventually enlisted his son Max to help with the tour’s growing popularity. Trip Advisor has named Tampa Bay Tours as the “Top Tour in Florida,” and visitors routinely name the event as the best part of their trip to Tampa.Photo by Keir Magoulas via Visit Tampa Bay Credit: Photo by Keir Magoulas via Visit Tampa Bay

Visit Tampa Bay and the Tampa Arts Alliance celebrate the release of their Tampa Bay Murals Wall Calendar with a Tampa Bay Arts Pop-Up in downtown Tampa Monday morning.

This isn’t the first time that the organizations have collaborated on an art project. The two organizations collaborated on last year’s award-winning “Art in Tampa” docuseries, and more joint projects are coming down the pipeline.

Tampa Arts Alliance Executive Director Michele Smith was discussing Vibrant Walls—a new Tampa Arts Alliance project cataloging the city’s murals—with Visit Tampa Bay when they had an idea.

“The Visit Tampa Bay team was really excited about the idea of cataloging and sharing the big picture of murals,” Smith told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “And they came up with the idea of doing a calendar to help promote the concept.”

Smith looks forward to Monday’s calendar launch event, which she hopes will shine some light on Tampa’s murals and muralists. Tampa Arts Alliance’s Vibrant Walls team has cataloged more than 150 murals in Tampa thus far, and people just keep painting.

Tampa Bay’s must-see murals, and the stories behind them

As Vibrant Walls prepares for liftoff, Smith says, “I’m looking forward to getting more visibility to artists and to the creativity of our county…just to be able to start sharing that narrative about how incredibly vibrant Tampa is.”
The event features a holiday gift market and Tampa City Ballet performing excerpts from The Nutcracker.

There’s also a Tampa Walls! downtown Mural Jam featuring 12 artists including Sebastian Coolidge, Jared Wright, Jujmo, Daniel “R5” Baros, Wayward Walls, Jess Jones, Carlos Pons, Dreamweaver, Whitney Holbourn, Hinson, Illsol, and Kevin Hughsam. Each artist has three hours to paint a 6-foot-by-9-foot mural which will later be available for purchase through Mergeculture Gallery.

There’s no cover for the Tampa murals calendar launch and Tampa Walls! downtown mural jam happening Monday, Dec, 11 at the Visit Tampa Bay visitors center.

The mural jam is not the week-long festival we were hoping for when we wrote about Tampa Walls last August—that’s been postponed until Tampa Walls! meets its fundraising goals. But in the meantime, Tampa Walls! invites you to come see how innovative and efficient Tampa’s muralists are.

“We’re going to be doing this paint jam, which will actually be a little bit impressive, because ten pieces will appear to be finished only from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., which isn’t a lot of time,” says Tampa Walls! organizer Tony Krol. “It puts a light on the efficiency and talent of the muralists in this new contemporary world where they can bust out large paintings in a small amount of time, because there’s a lot of innovation within this community.”

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