Oly hearts home murals
Jessica Frank’s retaining-wall mural painted by Fern Tallos. (Photo by Fern Tallos.)
Olympia, Washington. Mural projects bring joy to homeowners, spark conversation with neighbors and passersby, and provide informal wayfinding for the community. Supporting the work of muralists, both up-and-coming and well-known, creates connection with the urban identity of the neighborhood at large.
“Oh my gosh, the whole neighborhood is obsessed. Everyone loves it,” says Jessica Frank of the mural on the front retaining wall of her old Victorian in Olympia.
Hand painted by local artist Fern Tallos, Frank’s retaining wall mural features fantastic flowers, sleepy moths and many-pointed stars on a dark, velvety background. Like a waking dream, it flows up the front stairs, welcoming visitors to the home.
When Frank, stylist and owner of Stardust Salon, first bought the house, the retaining wall spanning the whole front end of the property was an unappealing, dingy white that seemed to attract dirt, grime and occasional tagging. Frank recounts her reaction to the old wall: “I was like, ‘Oh! Can we get this paint off? Can we [go back to] a cement color again?’”
Like many mural owners, Frank decided not to revert to the norm and opted instead for a creative solution. “And then I was like, ‘Why don’t we just paint a big mural and bring some art to the neighborhood?’ And we did, and now everyone’s jealous,” she laughs.
“It’s just really cool,” continues Frank, “I mean, people drive by our house and take pictures of it, which at first was a little weird,” says Frank. Soon she got accustomed to the attention. “I’d be in the front yard, and people were like, ‘Can we take a picture of your wall? Who did it?’ … It has been a big hit and we love it!”
Tallos has painted several mural projects in downtown Olympia, and this past April, one of their floral illustrations graced the cover of the city’s 2026 Spring Arts Walk printed guide. Readers may also recognize Tallos’ distinctive style in the hand-painted flowers and birds adorning the outdoor seating area of Cloud City Coffee in North Seattle.
Fellow artist Jimmy Ulvenes commissioned Tallos to paint his garage door in the historic South Capitol neighborhood of Olympia. Every year, the Northwest landscape/seascape painter and his wife celebrate their anniversary by acquiring art, and they liked Tallos’ distinctive style. “It’s got a punch to it,” says Ulvenes.
“It made perfect sense,” says Ulvenes of their decision to add a mural, “because our garage door was pretty gross, and we live on an alley that’s pretty uninspiring.”
“The homes around here are more than 100 years old. Ours is pretty big, you know, so we do beautification projects one at a time,” says Ulvenes. “Every summer, we have an alley crawl where the neighbors will gather at one end of the alley and stop by everyone’s backyard for a little bite and maybe a drink. And we just thought it would be really fun to have a mural, instead of our crummy beige garage door.”
For their garage door mural, the couple asked Tallos for on a botanical design with nasturtiums, ferns, ginkgo leaves, sprigs of hemlock and blueberries — all plants that grow in their garden. (Tallos frequently incorporates personal motifs into their distinctive visual vocabulary in consultation with their clients.)
Like Frank, Ulvenes says his mural creates a lot of interaction and conversation: “We get a lot of people that walk through our neighborhood to get to downtown, and a fair number of them cut through the alleys just because that’s interesting. We sit on our back porch and people stop and look and talk about [the mural].”
Erika Naficy advocates for the Olympia arts community and owns 3rd Hand Artist Support, a small business that serves working artists and arts organizations. She also has commissioned Tallos for two murals: one on her garage door and one on her front door. She finds that having art on the exterior of her home lifts her spirits.
“It brings me joy every time I unlock my front door,” says Naficy of her front-door mural.
Naficy believes that the murals, which feature Tallos’ signature abstract flower shapes, moons and stars, also delight others. She too has found connection through the public’s admiration of the art on her home.
“[The murals] have brought a lot of my neighbors joy too,” says Tallos. “Folks walking down the street pass my house and they stop and smile, or take a photo. Sometimes if I am out there working in the yard, they stop me and ask about Fern… I think it livens up my whole neighborhood even beyond my personal happiness.”
Look for the companion to this blog post, my article about how residential murals solve homeowners’ pain points in the At Home section of the Seattle Times on June 14.
