The annual mural project that launched in 2013 changed the visual landscape of Lexington, placing diverse, surprising images around many corners and creating a few iconic images in its nine-year run. 

“One of the things that hits me the hardest, and that really surprises me from that period, is I can’t believe that we asked people who I think are legitimately crazy talented to come to Lexington, and we’ve never done it before,” Winters says of PRHBTN’s early days. “And they’re like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It makes no sense that people kind of trust us to do it. 

“My reflection on it is just feeling really lucky that people, for some reason, bought into what our idea was and decided, ‘yeah we’ll give these people a chance to do something cool.’ And the fact that now I’m sitting here all these years later and being like, ‘Yeah we’re gonna do murals again,’ and people are excited.”

Yes, after a five-year hiatus, PRHBTN mural season is indeed back, with six new works by a half-dozen artists planned for October 9 to 21. It will coincide with the PRHBTN project that never went away: the annual PRHBTN exhibit at the Lexington Art League, opening October 9 at the Loudoun House. 

Winters and his wife Jessica Winters, who co-founded and directed PRHBTN, return to mural season with plenty of experience from those first years of mural-making and with new collaborators to share the workload of creating such large-scale works.

Joining the Winters as co-organizers are Lexington mural artists Alexandrea Pangburn and Geoff Murphy.

“What they have going on here with PRHBTN over the years has been so exciting,” says Pangburn, who was living in Denver most of the time PRHBTN was active as well as running mural festivals around the country . “Coming back and moving here, I really wanted to see that community thrive. So, it was sad whenever they decided not to do the mural portion anymore, and I think that the structure is here for it, and I also think that the rotation of murals gets the community excited about it. … People want to be involved, and it keeps that portion of the artist community alive.”

Murphy has been around and involved in PRHBTN since the beginning and says, “PRHBTN has been such a staple in the culture of Lexington, the art scene for so long now, and it’s done so much for the city that benefited me and everybody I know. The opportunity to actually work on it and help — I couldn't pass that up.”

Pangburn and Murphy were gung-ho for the revival, and Jessica came around quickly. John took some convincing, memories of the first round of mural seasons still relatively fresh.

PRHBTN started as a passion project for the Winters before they were married, and for the most part it was just the two of them organizing it, from securing artists and locations for them to paint to housing artists in their home and getting them supplies.

“We were never good at delegating,” Jessica recalls. “There were definitely human resources and people that would have been willing to help if we had just had the wherewithal to ask for help, and we just didn’t do it.”

Despite that, PRHBTN had a tremendous impact, grabbing headlines for iconic murals ranging from Brazilian painter Eduardo Kobra’s image of Abraham Lincoln on the back of the Kentucky Theatre to the controversial I Am Mo by French artist MTO. That mural presented logistical challenges due to its size and location. Then it sparked controversy when a neighboring business objected to its dark imagery, claiming it included gang symbols and fearing it would cripple the then-burgeoning Distillery District, which has since grown and thrived.

The Winters were frequently pleasantly surprised by the care artists took to learn about Lexington before painting, like Baltimore-based artist Gaia, who did extensive research for his Mother of Us All, a portrait of Lexington LGBTQIA+ icon Sweet Evening Breeze on North Limestone.

 “He wanted to paint underrepresented icons, and so he did that without any involvement from us,” Jessica says. “Artists are wanting to make a piece that is an asset to the community.”

And the art can be an asset simply in its presence and influence. 

“It has actually highlighted that we are a creative community in ways that no one has ever highlighted as successfully before, based on the number of visitors I have coming into the Loudoun House from out of town,” Lexington Art League director Lori Houlihan says. “They’re always impressed by the murals we have. We often have people wanting to get a map.”

PRHBTN and VisitLex have mural guides available online.

The Winters don’t claim credit but acknowledge that, in the wake of PRHBTN, murals grew in Lexington and surrounding cities. And while the annual mural seasons could be life-consuming, they were also a lot of fun for a couple who love the art and getting to know the artists, and for a community that often showed the artists the best of Southern hospitality.

“So many of them were just like, ‘Oh my gosh, everyone here is so nice,’” John says. “Like, ‘I went to go paint my mural and someone brought me a basket of muffins and all this coffee and a bottle of bourbon and like all this other stuff.’ They’re like, ‘when we paint in New York City or Chicago, we’re on a lift and people just walk by and keep walking. They might look, but they’re not going to stop and talk and they’re not going to be like, hey, thanks for being in our town.’”

But the years wore on the couple, and Jessica says that during the COVID-19 pandemic “we were just like, ‘this is not fun anymore.’ So that’s when we stopped.”

What never stopped was the annual PRHBTN exhibit at the Lexington Art League’s Loudoun House gallery, which features Kentucky artists and focuses on art that is criminalized, marginalized, and underappreciated. The exhibit started two years before the mural seasons and celebrates its 15^th edition this year.

“It is by far our most popular exhibit,” Houlihan says. “Hands down, and that includes the number of artists who apply, and the number of people who show up to see it, and the amount of art we sell.”

“When we stopped doing the murals, people were like, ‘Are we still gonna do the gallery?’” John recalls. “I’m like, ‘I have to.’ I feel a responsibility because it’s become such a great way for people of all skill levels in Kentucky to put pieces in a professional gallery and have them shown.”

One of the early complaints about PRHBTN was the focus on artists from outside of Kentucky. The Winters say that was never meant to slight local artists, but they wanted to bring in artists to both make local connections and help connect Lexington to a broader art world. 

Over the years, more Kentucky artists did participate, including Pangburn, who created a mural at Mechanic Street near Transylvania University with Aerosol Kingdom.

Launching what they hope will be a new round of annual mural seasons, the PRHBTN directors are excited that half the lineup will be from Kentucky.

“The stable of Kentucky artists who take mural work seriously has gotten so much bigger and so much more talented since we started,” John says. “These people are good and should paint in PRHBTN … alongside bringing crazy talented international or national artists into Lexington to paint.”

Kentucky artists will include Wylie Caudill, the official 2024 Kentucky Derby artist whose flowery creations have gained a lot of attention in the years since PRHBTN mural seasons ended.

Joining him will be longtime PRHBTN participant and friend Graham Allen, whose ubiquitous creations  around Lexington include the Harry Dean Stanton mural on the former Kentucky Fun Mall location.

Louisville-based Kacy Jackson, whose art adorns walls in Nulu and well beyond (including the colorful Louisville pronunciation mural downtown), will round out the Bluegrass State lineup.

Joining them will be:

•  Smug, a Glasgow, Scotland-based artist John says he has wanted to bring to PRHBTN since it began
• Kiptoe, a Los Angeles-based artist whose massive-scale works adorn walls well beyond the United States
•  Emily Ding, who is also based in Los Angeles and draws on natural imagery for her diverse, large-scale works

Pangburn says the artist choices were by the PRHBTN leadership, with all four of them bringing a list of artists to the table to come up with the lineup. She is no stranger to organizing mural festivals, serving as the executive director of Babe Walls, a Colorado-based collective of women and nonbinary artists that have presented mural festivals around the country.

During a conversation with the PRHBTN team she remarked that, “Knowing how you guys ran it in the past, and how I run my festivals, I have like a whole team of people, and the fact that just the two of you — I totally understand — but coming into it, I knew that there would be people willing to help that would make it a lot easier on y'all.”

Murphy agreed. “I can't believe how you all did that at first — just like two people — knowing what I know now, because from outside looking in, you think, ‘oh yeah, that’s probably like make a few phone calls, make things happen,’ but there's a lot that goes into it.”

With two new partners and even more allies in the fold, PRHBTN plans to expand the mural season experience for the public, including painting parties with food trucks and beer at each mural creation and an artist talk at the 21c Museum Hotel. 

With mural season back, PRHBTN has new and old supporters and a list of artists the organizers would like to invite in coming years. But it also needs funding.

“We’re like 100 percent driven by funding,” Pangburn says. “So, if we don’t have that, we can't continue.” John adds that “it's a community thing. So, if the community keeps telling us that they want it, and they keep helping us to fund it, we'll keep doing it.”

In the Winters’ view, Pangburn and Murphy have given PRHBTN murals a sustainable way to continue.

 “This is kind of like a way to see it go on a new path with a new generation of people that are energetic and committed to making it happen,” Jessica says. “Then I can just kind of fade into the history.”