The public art and mural guide to Wake Forest: what’s on the walls and where

Downtown Wake Forest has quietly accumulated a real collection of public art, and the best way to see it is a slow lap of six blocks with your eyes up. There are named murals with their own local followings, a set of artist panels applied directly to historic brick, and a public art commission that keeps adding to it. Here's what's on the walls, where to find each piece, and how to walk the whole thing.

The named murals

The town's own art trail identifies the major works by name and location:

• The Tree Bench and the WaFo Mural, near Unwined on White, Tonic Bar and Social Club, NC General Store and Wake Forest Coffee Company. The WaFo mural is the town's signature photo backdrop and the piece most likely to appear in someone's moving-day announcement.
• Life is Sweet in Downtown Wake Forest, near the Yellow Butterfly Boutique.
• Yum Yum and History of Wake Forest, inside and attached to the Cotton Company, which makes them the two-for-one stop, since the building itself is worth the visit per our spotlight on the world inside it.
• Flora and Fauna, Dancing in the Moonlight, Yellow Lilies, and If Mother Nature Could Dance, a cluster near the Renaissance Centre, Strike and Barrel, Page 158 Books, the Lemon Tree Cafe and Over the Falls. Four works in one walkable pocket makes this the densest art block downtown.

The artist panels on the brick

The subtler layer is easy to walk past. Through the Spotlight on Wake Forest Artists program, local students and artists were invited to submit original work, which an artist selection committee, drawn from arts professionals, the town, the Public Art Commission, Wake Forest Downtown and outside professional artists, evaluated. Selected pieces were scanned, reproduced in brick vinyl and applied directly to the facades of designated downtown buildings, with a plaque near each panel identifying the artist. Each selected artist received a $100 stipend. It's a clever solution to the problem of putting art on protected historic facades, and it means some of what you're looking at is a local teenager's drawing at architectural scale. Read the plaques.

Where the art sits in the architecture

Part of what makes the walk work is the canvas. The Downtown Wake Forest Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2002, covers roughly six acres along S. White Street from E. Roosevelt Avenue to Owen Avenue, with 25 contributing buildings constructed between about 1890 and 1949, including Colonial Revival and Art Deco examples: the Lovelace Building, the Dick Frye Restaurant, the Powers-Barbee Building, the 1899 Wilkinson Building, the B&S Department Store, the 1915 Arrington Building, the 1895 Bank of Wake, the Collegiate Theater and two post office buildings. Murals on century-old brick read differently than murals on a parking deck, and our then-and-now guide explains what each building used to be.

The galleries and the indoor art

Walls aren't the whole collection:

• The Gallery at the Cotton Company, upstairs in the marketplace building, alongside a vendor community the business puts at more than 75 local makers.
• The Renaissance Centre, whose exhibit programming rotates through the year.
• Sunflower Studio and Gallery and the working-artist spaces around downtown.
• The shops that sell locally made work, including the Makery, White Street Market and the boutiques on the strip, all mapped in our downtown walking guide.
• Making it yourself: craft classes at the Makery, candle making at White Street Market and the wider offerings in the art classes guide.

Art beyond downtown

The collection isn't confined to the White Street blocks. The Renaissance Centre on S. Brooks Street carries work inside and out, including a piece from the county's Wake Murals program. The Joyner Park Community Center has its own gym mural, which is the kind of detail that surprises people attending a recreation program. Utility boxes, banners and seasonal installations turn up around the civic corridor. And the town's Public Art Commission continues adding, so a piece that wasn't there last year may be there now, which is the best argument for walking the same blocks periodically instead of assuming you've seen it.

Walking the mural trail

Ninety minutes covers everything at a photography pace:

• Park once, using the parking guide, and start at the WaFo mural for the obligatory photo.
• Work south along S. White Street, reading the artist panel plaques as you pass them.
• Stop inside the Cotton Company for Yum Yum, the History of Wake Forest piece and the gallery upstairs.
• Finish in the Renaissance Centre pocket for the four-mural cluster, with a bookstore browse and coffee built in.
• Time it for late afternoon, when the low western light hits the brick, a point our photographer's guide and sunset guide both make.

The town also publishes a public art virtual tour for anyone who'd rather scout before walking, or who can't make the trip.

Photographing the murals

Since half the visits to these walls end in a camera roll, a few practical notes. The WaFo mural is the standard portrait backdrop, and it gets busy on weekend afternoons, so early morning is the uncrowded window. Brick reads warm in late light and flat at midday, which makes golden hour genuinely better for every piece downtown. Watch for parked cars in front of the lower murals, since the street spaces fill through the day. And be considerate at the businesses hosting the work: these are walls of operating shops and restaurants, so a session that blocks a doorway is a session that makes the next mural harder to get approved.

Why a town this size has this much

The short answer is that somebody decided to. Wake Forest maintains a Public Art Commission, works with Wake Forest Downtown and connects into county-level programs like United Arts Wake County's mural initiative, which has funded work across the county's towns including a piece at the Renaissance Centre. That institutional structure is why the collection keeps growing instead of appearing once and fading. For a town adding thousands of residents a year, per the growth guide, public art does specific work: it gives new arrivals something to photograph and old buildings a reason to stay standing, and it tells everyone walking past what the place thinks of itself. Look up on your next lap of White Street. There's more there than you remember.