SPOKANE, Wash. — In the daily race of the city, there's a welcoming sight you may pass by in a split second.
"So fast you don't realize the detail, so scrubbing it just allows you to appreciate the artwork, which I love," said JoAnne Baldwin as she surveyed a mural under the railroad bridge on Lincoln.
Spokane's somewhat hidden murals got a scrub Saturday as part of Spring Clean Week.
"We are helping to beautify the downtown core," said Kerri Danowski, operations and marketing manager for Spokane Arts.
The city's Office of Neighborhood Services and Code Enforcement, Spokane Arts, and Downtown Spokane Partnership joined together for the week-long effort. Spokane Arts enlisted the help of volunteers to spend Saturday cleaning up eight murals downtown, washing away a winter's worth of grime in anticipation for thousands of visitors for Bloomsday.
Other projects for the week include cleaning up sidewalks and adding new flowers to city planters.
"We wanted to make a lot of progress in a short amount of time," said Danowski.
That's where volunteers like Baldwin come in to put in the dirty work.
"This water is so dirty so something is working," she laughed. "It's so great to see all these murals across town and I thought why not be a part of cleaning them up as we get ready for Bloomsday."
Beyond the scrub, artists will come in to touch up the murals to remove art of a different type.
"We've really seen a big increase in graffiti and tagging since COVID," Danowski said.
Anti-tagging coatings will be put on to keep the pieces looking beautiful long past spring.
"It's also just a good sense of pride for the city and people who are here year-round," Danowski said. "When you see beautiful art on the street and wonderful plants all throughout downtown, you feel proud of that and you want to take care of it."
DOWNLOAD THE KREM SMARTPHONE APP
DOWNLOAD FOR IPHONE HERE | DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID HERE
HOW TO ADD THE KREM+ APP TO YOUR STREAMING DEVICE
ROKU: add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching for KREM in the Channel Store.
Fire TV: search for "KREM" to find the free app to add to your account. Another option for Fire TV is to have the app delivered directly to your Fire TV through Amazon.
To report a typo or grammatical error, please email webspokane@krem.com.