My name is Greta McLain. I am the owner and artistic director of Good Space Murals, which is a community mural studio and public art group out of Minneapolis, MN. I actually live and work out of Gunajuato, Mexico and travel around the US and world doing mural trainings and making large pieces of community infused art. In 2023-2024, I got to work with Grafton, North Dakota on the invitation of Laura Hughes Glanner who is a community member and a huge believer and visionary of what public art can do in a community and she was also on the beautification committee. She brought the proposal to her committee of doing a combo community mural project and mural training. Summer of 2024, we had over 200 people come out to our community paint parties and put their hands on this mural, filling in that base coat, which we created as a giant paint-by-number.

Our mural team was created of North Dakota artists, who were eager and interested in learning how to do the Good Space method. When you go see this mural in person, you are at the Grafton Carnegie Library, which is the first Carnegie Library in the state of North Dakota. I hope that when you touch the wall you can feel the intention, the hopes, the dreams, the love that this community has for Grafton, for each other, for their shared history, and for what this library represents. We put up this whole mural in August, but during the end of May, we all came together to talk through what are some tools and ways to activate this special space and where we as artists can say, “