AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — The Hoodoo Mural Festival is happening this Saturday in downtown Amarillo, featuring new artwork for the public, live music, food, and more.

Co-founder Andrew Hall and his wife Lauren started the Hoodoo Mural Festival in 2019 as a way to revitalize and beautify downtown Amarillo.

“We really just wanted to do something for our city that got people excited to be here, and hopefully people come visit,” Hall said. “So it’s not just for our community, but it’s for everyone that’s hopefully getting off I-40 and making Amarillo a destination, not just a stop to get to where they’re trying to go.”

Hall said they expect 2,500 to 3,000 people to attend this year’s festival.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun, we’ve got a second stage, a local artists’ stage, a silent disco, mainstage, vendors,” Hall continued, before noting the mobile community art murals. “We’re going to auction these off during the festival so you can own your own mural and that helps us support us and then it’ll help support the artists as well.”

One of those artists is Dan Black, who came from Denton to paint for this year’s festival.

“Festivals always feel like a celebration of the arts and so a lot of times working as an artist can, you can feel isolated because so much of the work is done alone,” Black said. “So, unique opportunities like this to get out, with other artists to work and paint alongside other artists, and then other forms of art like music to be present, it’s really special. It kind of for me, it kind of like revitalizes my practice when I get back home.”

Black painted a community mural, which is a three-sided structure with three different paintings. He said he started thinking about the subject and content, then the style, and finished with the color palette.

“That’s kind of my like, three steps because there was no, you know, most of the time with murals or some sort of commission and the people have like an idea of what they want. For this one because it was total freedom, I was able to just like kind of have fun and started thinking about people I love in my life and how it’d be fun to paint them,” Black said while painting one side of his structure. “This is a guy that I’ve had lunch with for like, once a week for like years and I’m gonna paint him as Batman and Robin and I think that’s gonna be hilarious. I can’t wait to send it to him.”

The festival starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 501 S. Polk St.

Click here for remaining general admission tickets priced at $40.