Brightening downtown Fort Myers with art

Seven teams of artists are painting murals that’ll pop up all over downtown Fort Myers and is for Southwest Florida’s Muralfest.

The event will act as a fundraiser to help artists impacted by Hurricane Ian.

Like much of Southwest Florida, the art community has been hurting since Hurricane Ian.

“The last year, we went through a lot. Sadly a lot of artists in our community lost their studios, their paints, and materials,” Cesar Agilera, the co-founder of Artsemble, said.

“Your heart breaks, because we know it’s not easy for artists to make a living and to thrive and, and to, you know, be part of the community,” Marne Adler executive director of Sun Peaks Center for Art & Sustainability, said.

Brian Weaver and Cesar Aguilera are the co-founders of Artsemble Undeground LLC.

“We wanted to step up and do our part. And we realized that there’s a lot of artists that felt the same way. So we decided to do it through what we knew best, which is art,” Weaver said.

Partnering with the Sun Peaks Center for Arty and Sustainability, the pair recruited artists the area to paint seven murals, one for each area of Southwest Florida.

“That’s what all these paintings are going to be about, you know, each one of our sections of Southwest Florida and their feelings of what they went through this artwork,” Weaver said.

They’ll be on display on buildings in downtown Fort Myers for all of April, starting with Muralfet on April 7. A new event they plan to bring downtown every year to celebrate art and raise money for the art community.

They said it’s been a group effort between local artists and city officials to make it a reality.

“The collaboration in general, is the thing that I think everybody should just embrace. I mean, this is this is what you find when you’ve gone through disaster. And this is how people come together,” Adler said.

Click here to get more information on the event.