About those new murals on North 9th Street

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ABOUT THOSE NEW MURALS ON NORTH NINTH STREET

The last of five murals in the 2023 installment of the Wabash Walls project was still being prepped and painted this week along North Ninth Street in Lafayette.

But during a dedication ceremony Saturday afternoon, amid an array sliders and sides from the Tick Tock Tavern (another reminder: I don’t get there for lunch nearly enough), Tetia Lee, executive director of The Arts Federation, was going on about bucket list artists drawn to town and what they were able to get done in a matter of days in some unlikely spaces.

“It’s hard to tell you just how great this week has been,” Lee said, closing out an annual Wabash Walls week that dates to 2018 and a push for public murals in Greater Lafayette that pre-dates that.

“I’ve been sort of star struck so much of the time,” Lee said.

(Photos: Dave Bangert)

The project, funded in part by the city, takes its name from the Wabash Avenue Neighborhood, where Wabash Walls started with a series of murals that remain today on a series of warehouses, homes and streets. The work branched into other parts of Lafayette in following years.

This year, five visiting artists contributed murals along North Ninth Street, including on towing company buildings and on three of the four pylons holding up Sagamore Parkway North at the Ninth Street underpass.