January 9-10| theCO | Deadline to SIgn up Dec. 31
Are you a West Tennessee artist ready to be involved in Jackson’s public art scene? This is your chance to leave your mark on downtown Jackson! Our Jackson Home, in partnership with the City of Jackson, is inviting artist teams of 2 to sign up for Design Dash - a new public art design challenge that will result in one team getting $6,500 to install downtown’s newest sidewalk mural.
Sign ups are now open!
What to Expect:
Form a Team: Pair up with another artist or graphic designer to create a dynamic duo. Choose one person to be the team leader who is a professional artist to lead the mural installation.
Mystery Mural Challenge: No hints, no pre-planned designs! You’ll receive the mural’s location and theme only when the event kicks off.
Free Meals: Enjoy meals provided during the event to keep you energized as you create!
Two-Day Design Event: Gather with other artist teams at theCO to collaborate, brainstorm, and create your mural concept in real time.
Free Mentorship: Receive guidance in your mural design from professional muralist mentors who will be with you during the event.
Pitch Your Vision: Present your design at the Design Dash Showcase to a panel of judges, friends, and family.
Winning Pitch: The top-ranked team will receive an $6,500 project budget to bring your sidewalk mural to life! This includes, but is not limited to, both artists' fees and labor, materials and supplies, equipment rentals, and travel (volunteer supplies excluded).
Why Participate?
Collaborate: Get to know and work with fellow local artists and designers.
Learn: Receive guidance from professional muralists and Our Jackson Home staff on what it takes to create a great new piece of public art.
Showcase Your Talent: Get your work seen by the community and art professionals, and leave your mark on Downtown Jackson!
Show Your Neighbors Your Work: Offer the community a window into your creative process of designing a mural.
Event Schedule:
Jan. 9th: 5:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Jan. 10th: 8:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
SHOWCASE: Jan. 10th, 4:00 p.m.
Participation Rules:
No participant will know the location or theme of the mural until attending the event.
One team leader should connect with another artist or graphic designer for the event. The team leader must be an experienced professional artist who will lead the mural project (we define “professional artist” as anyone who generates a portion of their income through visual art and can demonstrate their experience through past work).
Teams should bring a laptop and all supplies they might need to create a design rendering of their proposed mural (tablet, stylus, smartphone, paper of various sizes, writing or drawing utensils, paint markers, etc. might be of use for creating design renderings).
Both team members must be present for the entire event.
The team must present their concept and design at the conclusion of the event at the Design Dash Showcase via 5 PowerPoint slides. The winning team will be notified at the event after the judges score all projects.
The winning team will receive $6,500 for their mural installation. Both team members will sign a contract agreeing to complete the installation in the Spring of 2026.
Ready?
Sign ups are open now-Dec. 31st. Connect with your new team member and sign up below!
meet the mentors
ELISHEBA ISRAEL MROZIK| Friday Mentor
My work is rooted in centering Black identity—especially Black women—as whole, divine, and complex without needing to be defined in contrast to whiteness. As a Black American woman and descendant of the stolen peoples of Africa, I create to fill in the gaps left by erasure, rebuilding a sense of identity that was taken, silenced, and fragmented. My portraits, murals, and installations are grounded in our truths and our spirit—not for survival but a new vision of Black future. I explore themes like legacy, grief, beauty, memory, and cultural restoration through imagery that speaks to who we are, not who we’ve been told to be. Everything I make is a contribution toward reclaiming and reimagining the power, language, and visual narrative of Blackness—on our own terms.
This process is deeply communal. I see my work not just as a personal practice, but as a conversation with the greater community -an invitation to reflect, remember, dream, forecast and build together. I ask questions through my art, amplify voices that have long been silenced, and offer visual pathways toward small solutions that must ultimately be shaped and held by the collective. Because Black identity is not only an individual identity—it is ancestral, it is shared, and it is ours to define together... finally.
Callie Wright | Saturday Mentor
Callie is an artist and social worker who has called Kentucky, Tennessee, and now north Mississippi her home. She graduated from Union University in 2022 and then had the honor of attending a summer residency at the New York Academy of Art, before returning to Jackson to discover the joy of taking part in a small-town renaissance. She specializes in paintings that celebrate beauty in the people and places we might mistakenly overlook.