Freak Alley is a venue for

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

in the form of

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

s and

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

located in and adjacent to a service

alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, footpath, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane), or a path, w ...

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

Boise, Idaho Boise ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Idaho, most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, there were 235,685 people residing in the city. Loca ...

. The largest outdoor gallery in the

Northwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...

, and a Boise institution since 2002, it began with a painting of a single alley doorway and now extends from the alley itself to a gravel parking lot. Extant murals painted over and replaced by new murals (or incorporated into them) every two years; collectively it is the work of more than 200 artists. It has featured prominently in a survey of ten mid-sized American cities with thriving artistic communities in which Boise ranked second. The site, along with the back of the Union Block, received a $500,000 renovation in 2018 from the city.

Gallery

FreakAlleyBoiseSpiritOfHealingWaters.jpg, Spirit of Healing Waters FreakAlleyBoiseChineseIdeograms.jpg, Chinese Ideograms FreakAlleyAugust2014Renovation.jpg, Several murals are painted over

References

External links

{{Commons category Boise, Idaho Public art in Idaho Murals in Idaho Graffiti in the United States Art in Idaho

Gallery

See also

References

External links