Graffiti News

A four seasons design has council approval

McCall, Idaho, has approved a downtown mural that will bring seasonal imagery and wildlife to the west-facing wall at 309 E. Lake St. According to Max Silverson’s reporting for The Star-News, carried by the Lewiston Morning Tribune, McCall City Council selected Boise artist Matt Sunderman’s design at its September 10 meeting. The composition includes a sandhill crane, fox and moose.

The proposal was one of three designs Sunderman submitted. McCall Economic Development Planner Delta James said the painting work was expected to take about two weeks. The report described a project approaching its start, so the approval establishes a planned artwork rather than confirming a finished mural or an opening date.

The commission belongs to the Call for a Wall – Downtown McCall Mural initiative. City officials described the program as a way to bring a professionally designed and painted work by an Idaho-based artist into the downtown area. Sunderman’s experience includes about a dozen murals across Idaho, Wyoming and Florida, with work in Jackson, Wyoming, in 2025 and two murals in Nampa, Idaho, in 2023.

Public feedback favored the design but included objections

The selected sketch was the preferred option in both a public poll and the McCall Artwork Selection Committee’s assessment. The poll drew 172 responses, and some comments described the winning proposal as the strongest representation of McCall. The result gave the council evidence of public preference among the three submitted options.

That preference did not amount to unanimous support. A report presented to the council identified a smaller group that rejected all three concepts. Those respondents considered the designs generic or too close to familiar cabin and mountain-town imagery. Some thought the proposals looked AI-generated, while others wanted another round of concepts. These were criticisms recorded in the selection process, rather than a finding about how the artist made the designs.

James explained that the submitted concept combined elements in a collage-like form, while the mural itself would be painted by hand and have a more painterly appearance. For people following public art, the distinction matters: a proposal communicates a composition, while the finished wall also reveals the artist’s handling of paint and scale. The source does not establish that artificial intelligence was used.

The commission includes funding and a maintenance term

Sunderman will receive $20,000 for the mural, split equally between the City of McCall and the McCall Redevelopment Agency. Each organization will contribute $10,000. The building’s owner, Big Lake Properties LLC of McCall, will not pay for the painting work.

The owner will instead take responsibility for maintaining and repairing the mural for five years. After that period, the owner will be allowed to paint over it. That provision sets a minimum maintenance commitment; it does not announce that the artwork will disappear after five years. For a mural audience, the arrangement is a useful reminder that public visibility and long-term care are separate parts of a commission.

This is the second mural commissioned by the City of McCall. The earlier project, Jay Rasgorshek’s “River Otters and Balsam Root,” was completed in 2023 on the west-facing wall of the MCPAWS Thrift Store at 301 Lenora St. The two addresses give followers of McCall’s commissioned murals a concrete basis for understanding where the city’s wall-based public art is being placed.

The west-facing wall is the key location detail

The planned mural wall stands beside the McCall Real Estate Company parking lot, across Lake Street from the Lakeview Chevron gas station. Those landmarks, together with 309 E. Lake St., identify the specific building face described in the report. Visitors should retain the west-facing detail when locating the proposed artwork.

Visibility was central to the choice. Eligible sites had to be visible from a public street, parking lot or park, and James said this wall is particularly noticeable to pedestrians and southbound traffic on Idaho 55. The setting places the mural within everyday movement through town, where people can encounter a commissioned artwork outside a gallery.

For anyone planning a mural walk, the report provides a destination and a production estimate, but no confirmed completion date. Treating the address as a project location preserves that distinction while allowing the approved design to become part of an informed public-art itinerary.

Explore nearby murals on Wallscape’s map.

Source: Lewiston Morning Tribune