Street Art Stories: Babe Walls was the women-centered mural event we all needed

Colorado-based artist Alex Pangburn noticed a shortage of opportunities for women in street art. The Babe Walls Festival, which she brought to Chamblee, was her solution.

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I went to the Babe Walls Chamblee Mural Festival intending just to take photos. But before I knew it, I had a paintbrush in my hand, and I was applying bright purple pigment to the community mural.

Babe Walls was held November 7 through November 10, bringing 22 new murals painted by women and nonbinary artists to the Chamblee Rail Trail, a two-mile-long miniversion of the Atlanta Beltline following abandoned railroad tracks. Eight artists from the Colorado-based Babe Walls organization were paired with Georgia artists painting large murals at the tunnel under Peachtree Boulevard. Twelve Georgia artists painted murals on columns under Clairmont Road. Saturday was the busiest day, with mural painting in full swing, an artist’s market featuring women and nonbinary vendors, food trucks and a community yoga class.

My unexpected chance to paint should not have been a surprise because Babe Walls is all about opportunity. Many emerging artists have launched their careers at Babe Walls.

“We should just make our own opportunities if we’re not going to be given them,” said Alex Pangburn, Babe Walls founder. “We wanted to come together and create a community of women and nonbinary artists that were supported in the street art scene. And so we pulled together and organized our first festival in 2020. And now we’re in our fourth year and doing a festival in Chamblee, Georgia, this year, and we’re really excited about it.”

Pangburn describes herself as “a contemporary Western artist based out of Golden, Colorado, whose work focuses on painting local flora and fauna in the location that I am painting in.” With no formal training other than a few art classes here and there, her college major at the University of Kentucky was animal science. She initially worked as a veterinary technician in Powell, Ohio. As a side hustle to help pay the bills, Pangburn began painting pet portraits for the clients and found herself booked up for over a year.

In 2017, she moved to Denver and ran the retail gallery for the River North Arts District. “Among the women artists, there was a general consensus that it was hard for them to get accepted into these mural festivals or to get mural jobs around town,” Pangburn explains. “And so I put together this idea of why don’t we make our own festival if that’s something that we’re going to be excluded from.” And thus, Babe Walls was born, expanding access to the mural scene to women and nonbinary artists. Based in Denver, the Babe Walls organization comprises eight artists who also perform various staff functions. They put on an annual mural festival in Denver and have recently begun to take their show on the road to other cities.

Elaine Stephenson, who goes by Artsy Elaine, began working with Pangburn in 2021 to bring the event to the Atlanta area. Stephenson describes herself as “an artist and muralist painting bright and colorful art to uplift and inspire” and quit her day job as a graphic designer in 2021 to become a full-time artist. In her new role, she quickly established a meet-up group for female creatives to support each other and to form a community. To share her knowledge with less experienced artists, Stephenson created and regularly teaches a four-hour-long, hands-on mural painting seminar. Stephenson recently initiated and currently curates a minimural project with rotating artwork, allowing emerging artists to paint their first murals.

Even before the arrival of Babe Walls, the city of Chamblee had been planning to add some murals to the Chamblee Rail Trail and had money budgeted for the project. The city also wanted to raise public awareness of the Rail Trail. It just needed the artwork.

Stephenson put out a call for artists, and over 50 Georgia artists applied with their portfolios. Each Babe Walls team member selected an applicant to collaborate with to paint the large-scale murals at the tunnel. Another 12 artists were selected by Stephenson and the Babe Walls members to paint individual murals on the columns. Atlanta-based artist Vera Ziegler facilitated the community mural, and all the artists were given complete freedom to choose their own subject matter.

Stephenson and Pangburn collaborated on a colorful mural at the mouth of the tunnel, combining compatible styles. Pangburn paints native birds and plants, and Stephenson regularly uses floral themes. Their mural features a ruby crowned kinglet (a bird that winters in Georgia) and native Georgia purple cone flowers and yellow daisies. The wall also includes a pet portrait memorializing Stephenson’s cat, Merlin, who recently passed away.

Another well-matched pair is Lisette Correa, who goes by Arrrtaddict, and Danielle SeeWalker. SeeWalker is a Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in her home state of North Dakota. A DNA test revealed that Arrrtaddict is 20% Taino, the indigenous people of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. Their mural highlights their Native American heritage.

Charity Hamidullah and Leah Abucayan co-painted a mural with the inspirational dictum that women should support, uplift and water one another like flowers to bloom to their fullest potential. “Babe Walls has been absolutely amazing,” said Hamidullah. “We were greeted with hugs. Truly a beautiful and well-organized gathering of very talented women and nonbinary artists.”

The columns were painted by artists ranging from seasoned veterans to first-timers. Nicole Kang Ahn’s mural titled Take Heart shows women being empowered and emboldened to lean into their strengths to be true to themselves. The imagery is drawn from Ahn’s Korean ancestry. Children’s artist Nicole Mallarino painted her first mural, featuring flowers symbolizing the birth months of her family members: a daffodil for her husband, a larkspur for her son, poppies for her daughter and violets for herself. Nicole Marizalde’s mural celebrates her Greek heritage. As a Colombian and Greek American, she strives to represent the experiences of hyphenated Americans.

City representatives saw in Babe Walls the fulfillment of their ambitions for the Chamblee Rail Trail. “We had so many community members say that they didn’t know the space was down there,” said Chamblee Public Arts Coordinator Teneisha Jones. “So hopefully we will see an increase in usage as well. We are so happy with the results of the mural festival, and working with Babe Walls was a smooth process.”

Speaking to the difficult artist selection process, Elaine Stephenson said, “It was very tough narrowing it down because there were a lot of great applications and talent.” Selecting a few murals to focus on was equally difficult. A stroll along the Chamblee Rail Trail is warranted to see them all.

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Arthur Rudick created the Atlanta Street Art Map in 2017 after retiring from a successful career as an engineer with Eastman Kodak and the Coca-Cola Company. His first experience of art was seeing an Alexander Calder mobile as a child in the Pittsburgh airport. Rudick is ArtsATL’s street art expert and a regular contributor.