Street Art In Western Montana
<p>Above is a photo of a mural on the side of a dilapidated building in Hot Springs, Montana, twenty minutes from my hometown. The town is in a forgotten corner of the Flathead Indian Reservation and is one of the poorest in the state.</p>
<p>Yet you won’t find graffiti or tagging anywhere, as you might expect for such an impoverished area.</p>
<p>Street art in rural western Montana, where I live, is very different from the street art you’ll find in cities. The only tagging I see is on the sides of passing train cars, and I almost never see murals consisting solely of human faces.</p>
<p>Instead, street art is used to make poor towns look more attractive, and to convey something of their past and present.</p>
<p>The mural above, for example, includes a large image of a man riding a bull at the annual rodeo, the biggest event Hot Springs ever sees. Beside it is a mish-mash of images depicting the history of the town: tipis to indicate the Native culture that has been here for millennia; a plow and hay wagon belonging to the area’s early white settlers; a classic car zooming into the future.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/digital-global-traveler/street-art-in-western-montana-5aa1cc5fc2c4"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>