FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Reynolds ▪ May 1, 2025
Flint Energies announced today that the cities of Byron, Perry and Thomaston have won grants from the Co-op’s Rural Murals program. Flint will award $10,000 each to the Byron Convention and Visitors Bureau, the City of Perry and the City of Thomaston, as part of a matching grant. All three groups will invest approximately $2,500 of their own funds towards their community’s mural project.
The Byron mural will transform the side of the building at 209 Main Street. The proposed mural will highlight peaches, which are indictive of the area, and the town’s rail history. Byron was one of the busiest depots for transporting peaches to the national market. The mural, which is diagonally across Main Street from the Depot, will complement the recently opened Historic Byron Train Depot Museum.
The Perry mural will adorn a wall of the local community theater, Perry Players, located at 909 Main Street. The wall faces a city-owned parking lot where on Saturday mornings, the Perry Farmers Market is held. The mural will depict Perry’s agriculture roots and will tie into the City of Perry’s brand identity of welcoming people to “Where Georgia Comes Together.”
The Thomaston mural will decorate the rear wall of the building located at 210 South Center Street and will be adjacent to the future Thomaston Courtyard alleyway improvement project. The mural will honor 200 years of the Thomaston-Upson County community and will feature key figures, architecture and symbols of the local community. This will be the first Rural Mural located in Upson County.
The Byron Convention and Visitors Bureau and the City of Perry have contracted with premier muralist Chris Johnson of Columbus. Since 2017, Chris has painted more than 50 murals across the Southeast. View examples of Chris’ mural work and community projects at his website, chrisjmfa.com.
The City of Thomaston will be working with the University of Georgia’s “Color the World Bright” program to complete the mural. This student-led organization works with communities to incorporate art at a fraction of the cost of professional artists. This effort supports the University’s Land Grant Institution duty of serving communities across the state, while also offering first-hand experience for students looking to pursue artistic careers.
The Rural Murals program, which began in 2019, establishes a collaboration between Flint Energies and the local, rural community to create outdoor murals that carry lasting impact, spark economic development and are the focal point of community discussion. The focus is to celebrate the unique history and diversity of our local rural communities. It is vital to establishing a strong sense of place for residents by creating suitable and recognizable murals within a community/downtown. The Rural Murals program intends to increase the number of public murals across Flint’s service territory while supporting the incredibly talented artist community within Middle Georgia. Flint Energies will identify and partially fund the projects that highlight positive images of Middle Georgia’s history and culture through an application process.
The program’s murals are designed to bring travelers off main interstates to travel the backroads…off the beaten path to discover the vast resources our area has to offer. Money spent in the towns that host the murals will directly benefit those areas, as the funds are given by visitors and not long-time residents. So far, the program has installed 13 murals across Flint’s service area.
“We are delighted to partner with Byron, Perry and Thomaston on this year’s mural projects and hope they continue to transform not only the economies but the lives of residents in each of these communities as our other murals have done,” says Marian McLemore, Flint’s Vice President of Cooperative Communications.
Previous Rural Murals projects are located at:
- 100 North Sumter Street, Oglethorpe
- South Matthews Street, Roberta
- 4 West Main Street, Butler
- 20 South Broad Street, Butler
- 110 South Camellia Blvd., Fort Valley
- 104 East Church Street, Fort Valley
- 111 North Broad Street, Buena Vista
- 28 Church Street, Ellaville
- 115 East Main Street, Fort Valley
- 102 West Church Street, Fort Valley
- 101 East Main Street, Marshallville
- 254 Wright Avenue, Roberta
- 50 West Monroe Street, Talbotton
Earlier this year, Flint Energies invited rural communities located in the Co-op’s service territory to apply for the Rural Murals grant. Flint Energies’ service area encompasses parts of Bibb, Chattahoochee, Crawford, Dooly, Harris, Houston, Macon, Marion, Monroe, Muscogee, Peach, Schley, Sumter, Talbot, Taylor, Twiggs and Upson counties. In March, the Cooperative received several grant applications. The top three scoring mural ideas were funded.
Contact:
Marian McLemore, VP of Cooperative Communications, 478.218.5600, mmclemore@flintemc.com