Richardson Public Art Murals & Sculptures Beyond the ArtWalk

The last time anyone put a number on Richardson's public art, the count landed at about 20 pieces, according to a December 2018 Community Impact report on the city's cultural arts sector. That number came from a formal, juried process: the city's Public Art Master Plan, adopted in 2017, and the resulting self-guided Public ArtWalk that runs 2.8 miles from Galatyn Park to CityLine.

What that count could not have captured is everything that came after it through a completely different channel. Since 2019, Richardson has added at least four more public artworks, none commissioned through the city's selection committee, none marked on the official ArtWalk map, and all of them sitting in neighborhoods the original route never touches. If you've walked the ArtWalk and figured that's the whole picture, you've seen the older half.

The Route Everyone Actually Follows

The 2017 Public Art Master Plan gave Richardson a specific, plannable loop. It runs along the northern stretch of the Central Trail, starting near the Eisemann Center for Performing Arts and ending at CityLine, and it was built through a partnership between the city, the Business Council for the Arts, and the Leadership Arts Institute.

Along the way sits work with real pedigree. Gordon Huether's sculpture "Over the Moon" at CityLine takes its shape from the letter C and its inspiration from the "Hey Diddle Diddle" nursery rhyme paired with the Texas longhorn. A few steps away, Cliff Garten's bronze "Retexo" sits in a fountain at Four CityLine Plaza, one of more than fifty public works Garten has completed across the U.S. and Canada. The Timothy Berg and Rebekah Myers collaborative contributed a bright green ceramic rabbit called "One of a Kind" at CityLine's DART Plaza, a nod to the site's role as a transportation hub. Joseph Havel's "Endless," part of a series examining books as cultural vessels, landed near the site of what was then a planned Aloft Hotel. Angela Mia De La Vega's bronze "Whirlwind" captures two children mid-spin. Indoors, the Eisemann Center anchors the south end of the route with "The Seven Muses."

Huether described his goal for the CityLine piece simply:

"I wanted to emphasize the local identity and history of the area in a unique way."

The route also picks up "The Rocket" at Heights Park, unveiled in 2013 to honor a rocket-ship playground installed there in the 1960s and removed in 2008. And just off the mapped path, at the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Alma Road, Oregon sculptor Ed Carpenter's "Micro Macro Mojo" rises 70 feet into the sky, a glass and steel cone selected from 22 competing proposals in 2016 and unveiled in October 2018. It was funded jointly through the city's Hotel/Motel Tax Fund and a Tax Increment Financing fund tied to the Eastside Phase II development, and it's since become a regular stop for runners and cyclists on the Central Trail.

That's the version of Richardson's public art most residents know, because it's the version with a map.

What The Count Left Out

Nothing on that list happened after 2018. Everything that's landed since came from a different source entirely: local artists and business owners painting murals on buildings the city didn't commission and the ArtWalk map doesn't include.

The pattern started in late 2019, when a team of artists working under the AIR4arts program, led by Rich McNeill, painted "SpiritMindBody" on the north side of the Richardson YMCA. In 2020, muralist Rasheal Winters of Created Art Co. partnered with Laci Coker, founder of the wedding-industry cooperative Darling Co., on four murals at 111 E. Polk St. in Richardson's historic downtown. Coker had shopped the idea to Deep Ellum and Uptown first before settling on Polk Street, and the murals became a genuine community project when Richardson police officers and passersby helped paint individual bricks alongside Winters and Coker.

Winters returned in mid-May 2021 with a floral arch mural on the east side of the Lockwood District, near 506 Lockwood Dr., painted as a nod to a new floral shop that had opened there. Then in December 2023, a different kind of mural appeared on the east side of the IQ HQ building at 1302 E. Collins Blvd., tracing the evolution of the Richardson Innovation Quarter, the city's 1,200-acre tech district.

Here's how the two collections stack up against each other:

Everything in the top half of that table sits on or near the official ArtWalk. Everything in the bottom half exists because a business owner and an independent artist decided a blank wall needed color, with no map, no selection committee, and no connection back to the 2017 plan.

Why The Two Lists Never Merged

The split makes sense once you see how each half got funded. The ArtWalk pieces came out of a structured process: a five-member selection committee reviewing dozens of proposals, city council votes, and public money from sources like the hotel tax fund. That process produces durable, well-documented work, but it also moves slowly and stays tied to specific development sites like CityLine and Eastside Phase II.

The mural wave moved on a different clock entirely. A business owner needs a wall painted, calls a local muralist, and it's done in weeks, not years. That's how Winters ended up doing back-to-back projects for a wedding cooperative and a flower shop, in two different neighborhoods, without either mural ever crossing paths with the city's formal art program. That speed is exactly why the mural wave has produced more new pieces since 2019 than the official program has added since the Micro Macro Mojo unveiling.

A Route That Covers Both Halves

If you want to see the full picture in one outing, the two collections are close enough together to link on foot or by bike, even though no single map draws the line between them. A route that touches both:

• Start at Heights Park to see "The Rocket," then head to the nearby YMCA for "SpiritMindBody"
• Head south into historic downtown for the Darling Co. murals at 111 E. Polk St.
• Cut over to the Lockwood District for the floral arch mural near 506 Lockwood Dr.
• Swing past Greenville Avenue and Alma Road for "Micro Macro Mojo," lit from within after dark
• Finish on the official ArtWalk at CityLine, working through Huether, Garten, Havel, De La Vega, and the Berg/Myers rabbit before the Eisemann Center's "Seven Muses" indoors

That loop covers five years of city-led investment, from the Rocket's 2013 unveiling to Micro Macro Mojo in 2018, plus four more years of independent murals that followed, none of it summarized anywhere in one place until now.

Richardson's relationship to design, whether it's a sculpture funded by a tax increment district or a mural painted for the cost of a business owner's goodwill, says something about how the city treats its blank walls and empty corners. It doesn't leave them blank for long.

If you're the kind of resident who notices that kind of thing about a place, that same eye for design and detail is exactly what shapes how LaTrice Thomas and the 23 Lux team approach homes across Richardson and the rest of DFW. Let's Connect if you ever want to talk about what that looks like for your own address.