Over the summer, as part of Amarillo’s Juneteenth celebration, Blank Spaces Murals completed its 100th mural in the Texas Panhandle. The 100-foot-long public art installation stretches along the side of the Black Historical Cultural Center, injecting life and color into a historic neighborhood.
The mural itself is impressive, a typical Blank Spaces combo of realism with movement, geometric patterns, and an appreciation for storytelling. But the most impressive part of this nonprofit’s story isn’t about mural quantity or quality, but the people behind it.
Blank Spaces is a rotating crew of high school and college students, and has been since 2019, when Caprock art educator Shawn Kennedy and local artist Shanda Fletcher founded the organization, with the help of Dyron Howell, executive director of Snack Pak 4 Kids. That’s 100 murals over six years.
In fact, the expansion of large-scale public art in Amarillo has as much to do with Blank Spaces as anything else, including the Hoodoo Mural Festival or the City of Amarillo’s publicly funded Mural Grant Project. Blank Spaces has been a reliable Hoodoo participant almost from the start, and are definitely the most prolific artists benefiting from the city’s mural grants.
I was the founding chair of the city’s Beautification and Public Arts board and have been involved on the organization side of Hoodoo, and I’ll say this: Blank Spaces is the beating heart of Amarillo’s mural story. When I talk about public art in Amarillo, I talk about Blank Spaces.
It started after Howell visited the open-air street art of Wynwood Walls in Miami, Florida. He came back to Amarillo determined to pioneer a similar art movement here, beginning with the white exterior walls at the Snack Pak headquarters. Howell asked Kennedy to help him figure out how to put a big mural on the building. “He had the wall, and Dyron said we could use the wall,” Kennedy remembers. “We had no money. We had nothing. We just had a wall and a bunch of kids that were excited.”
Those kids were some of Kennedy’s high school art students from Caprock. There were 12 of them at the beginning, all girls, and Blank Spaces lore remembers them as the “Founding Females.” Ashley York of Snack Pak brought in one of her artist friends, Shanda Fletcher, for those early conversations. Fletcher and Kennedy had a personal connection: He’d been her art teacher during his first year at Caprock.
“We just so happened to cross paths and he’s like, ‘Hey, want to mentor a kid?’” she remembers.
Kennedy says Fletcher had been his “star student” back in 2006 and 2007 and was delighted they could reconnect, even if just for that one Snack Pak mural. The duo figured it out, driving students to and from that location during the summer of 2019, with all of them learning in the process. The Mural Grant Project launched that same year, and helped fund additional mural work at Snack Pak. The grants covered paint supplies and helped pay the young artists for the hours they were putting in.
Multiple art students came and went over those weeks, but the Founding Females represented the dedicated core who truly put in the work. It was a hot summer. The hours were long. Painting is uncomfortable. “They were the ones who stuck with us,” Kennedy says.
Before long, the Snack Pak building was awash in color. Other entities started to ask about murals. “We had to find our business sense in there,” Fletcher says. “It was fun and it was like this summer job. It was a good time. But then we realized really quickly, because our phone never stopped ringing, that this was a business now.”
Eventually Blank Spaces became a 501c3 nonprofit and Fletcher began working full time as project manager. Local organizations would approach them to design and execute a mural. She would take a lead role on the design side, working with Kennedy and the student artists to create the concept before paint touched any wall. Kennedy led from the administrative and paperwork side while keeping his day job with the school district.
Sometimes the Mural Grant Project would help fund the mural. Other times, the business covered all costs. And when it was time to paint, everyone got involved: Kennedy, Fletcher, and student after student. They worked nights and weekends and long summer days. The young artists got paid. Blank Spaces refers to these students as “interns,” and around 65 have now passed through the program.
The murals speak for themselves, from the creativity of the designs to the execution, Kennedy says. No one looks at a Blank Spaces mural and assumes it was painted by high school art students.
“We want [the quality] to be unexpected. We want it to be original. We want it to be exciting. But we also want it to be able to compete with major markets,” Kennedy says. As Hoodoo built its national reputation, the festival gave Blank Spaces the opportunity to create murals alongside major artists like Drew Merritt and Tristan Eaton.
“From the very beginning, when we hire them, we make it known [that] we have really high standards,” Fletcher says of the interns. Those first students came from Kennedy’s classroom, but eventually began applying from across the city, including all four Amarillo high schools. College students are now part of Blank Spaces, too, adding experience and leadership to the roster. “This is not a one-man show. We all work together. I really think setting that standard from the very beginning makes them walk in and be, like, ‘I gotta do great,’ because these people think I’m good enough to be here,” she explains
Organizations in other states—like ArtReach San Diego—are starting to reach out about starting similar projects in their communities. And at this point, within the Amarillo art world, being part of Blank Spaces has become aspirational. “None of your friends are getting paid to do this. This is a special opportunity,” Fletcher says.
Meanwhile, Blank Spaces just keeps handing paintbrushes and spray cans and real-world opportunities to hungry young artists. One hundred-plus murals later, their efforts have transformed the city. “At the beginning, we had to convince people of how important [public art] was, and now we really don’t have to have that conversation anymore,” Fletcher says.
Snapshots of Street Art
Blank Spaces has left its mark in every corner of the city. These murals showcase the breadth of the group’s artistry, evolving style and vision.
