Street Art In Athens
By Tori Kyer | Photos by Claira Tokarz | Design BY Elizabeth Dickerson
The city hides a rich collection of public art for those who take the time to look
You can walk down Court Street a hundred times and never notice the graffiti tags on an alleyway corner, a sticker curling on a stop sign or the story behind a mural. Athens hides its art in plain sight.
Cats Love Butterflies by Keith Wilde, Athens, Ohio.
In Athens, art is not limited to galleries or someone's social media page. It breathes through the city’s bricks and alleyways. These details and expressions — some planned, some impulsive — brand Athens with its connectivity and identity.
Local artist Keith Wilde is the creative mind behind some of the murals that might appear on your daily route.
“I was just a person that always kind of comes back to art,” he says.
In 2015, an explosion of color swept through Athens as murals began appearing more frequently.
“Graduate students, professors, local artists, even locals started putting color on the walls,” Wilde says.
Projects such as the mural titled “Without Labor, Nothing Prospers” on Court Street, led by visiting artist Chris Stain, marked a new chapter for the town.
“That’s what makes Athens different,” Wilde says. “Our stories, our aspirations, even our beliefs, they all come out through how we use color and space.”
For Wilde, murals are not just background images, but reflections of the community itself.
“You can look at what kinds of murals show up in which towns and see what each community values,” Wilde says. “In Athens, we tell different stories because we’re a different kind of community.”
Many of these pieces highlight local history, from the African American brickmakers of Stimson Avenue to figures celebrated at the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center.
“A lot of people don’t know those stories,” Wilde says. “Public art makes them visible again.”
Still, visibility remains a challenge.
“How many murals do you think we have?” Wilde says. “Most people start to count on their fingers which [murals] they have seen. It’s closer to 50.”
Some of the murals hide in alleyways or in neighborhoods.
According to Wilde, that habit of inattention runs deep in modern life.
“We live in the age of distraction,” Wilde says.
He argues that if everyone is nose-deep in their phones, they will miss the beauty and art around them.
“Once you see one, you start seeing them everywhere,” Wilde says. “It’s like meeting someone new; you start noticing them all over town.”
“[Street art] strengthens cultural identity by enabling residents to connect with their environment, promoting pride and place attachment,” according to a 2025 research report titled Street Art for Urban Regeneration: Cultivating Community Identity, Social Cohesion and Economic Growth by Minjae Kang. The report cites a study by the National Endowment for the Arts, which found “respondents reported a 60% increase in interaction with neighbors following public art projects.”
Community groups in Athens are working to help people learn more about this valuable visual language. Ohio University’s mAppAthens project treats the city as an open-air museum, pinpointing public artworks and cultural landmarks. According to the mAppAthens web page, “this interdisciplinary collaborative project offers online maps that can be leveraged as outdoor museum tours to engage visitors of all ages in active, place-based learning experiences to explore an array of topics including art, wellness, history, geology, ecology and more.”
Local nonprofits, such as the Athens Municipal Arts Commission, also organize mural walks and scavenger hunts to draw attention to neighborhood art.
“It’s about getting people to walk around, look around and connect,” Wilde says.
Athens is home to countless creative individuals, and these expressions form the core of the town’s whimsical, welcoming identity. Even the bathroom stalls of Court Street bars are filled with doodles, quotes and signatures — small reminders of how people leave their mark. In the age of digital media, it is easy to overlook the art that surrounds us, but in Athens, creativity is always present and waiting to be noticed.b
