Whenever Megan Lingerfelt appears in public with cans of paint and an extension ladder, it represents the birth of a new local icon in her adopted hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. As a muralist, she brings new life to once-abandoned spaces, adds splashes of creativity to public buildings and businesses, and draws welcome attention from passersby. You can’t go far in this burgeoning cultural mecca without seeing her work.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Megan on a number of projects,” says Emily Curran, visual arts program manager for Dogwood Arts, a nonprofit that promotes and celebrates the region’s art, culture, and natural beauty. “With each one, she brings vibrancy and beauty to a place where that previously didn’t exist.”
In downtown Knoxville, Lingerfelt’s 12 x 50-foot mural “Windows to the Smokies,” on the side of a loft building, features a wall of windows — depictions of favorite windows throughout the city with views of the Great Smoky Mountains. In Strong Alley, when a mural of Dolly Parton was vandalized, the original artist Colton Valentine tapped Lingerfelt to restore it. The result is more than a replication — she reimagined the portrait to capture the essence of Parton in all her glamor and inimitable style. It has become a must-see for visitors to Knoxville who regularly stop to take selfies with it.
Lingerfelt grew up in Asheville, North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Asheville with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. Working originally with oil and watercolor on canvas and paper, she found her niche in painting murals when she later moved to Seattle.
“I fell in love with it,” she says, “getting to be outside and talking to strangers who would walk up and ask about what I was doing … it made me feel very involved in whatever location where I was working.”
When Lingerfelt and her husband relocated to Knoxville for his job, she hit the ground running.
“Knoxville had this really wonderful maker scene, but there weren’t a ton of people focusing on mural work,” she says. “I just came in and said, ‘Here, look at me, I want to do it, where can I go?’ The opportunities followed, so I’m really thankful.”
When the pandemic hit, murals turned out to be therapeutic for Lingerfelt as well as the community. “A lot of people looked toward murals as a way to say, ‘Hey, this is outside, you can drive by in your car and be safe.’ At the same time, it’s something that’s permanent and beautifying, and being outside painting is a way to meet people and get more opportunities.”
Lingerfelt says she loves using organic, botanical designs in her work, but she’s also drawn to the high contrast of industrial components. “I’m attracted to shiny metal objects, which have a lot of definition, and that’s become a platform for me to play with color. I like to do these two different extremes of design.”
Lingerfelt has seen her footprint continue to grow, in Tennessee towns like Maynardville and Sweetwater, with a new mural coming soon to Athens.
Meanwhile, she’s also made a mark on the small town of Viola, Tennessee. Brian and Sara Covert, proprietors of Viola’s Pizza Company, own a 100-year-old guest house adjacent to the pizzeria that needed some local color. They reached out to Kristin Luna, president of the nonprofit Do More Art (DMA) for advice. “She said, ‘I have the perfect artist. We’re in love with what she is doing.’”
Lingerfelt came to Viola and painted a mural (“Magnolias”) that stops traffic in this little town. The Coverts’ son even proposed to his girlfriend in front of the mural; Lingerfelt added a little heart in the mural to commemorate the moment.
Brian adds that they raised money for the mural by crowdfunding from the restaurant’s patrons. “They loved what we were doing and trying to make Viola a destination and loved being part of it,” he says. “Magnolias” is now part of the Walls for Women Trail — a project that honors the women’s suffrage movement and Tennessee’s status as the final state needed to ratify the amendment that gave women the right to vote.
Megan’s Guide to Knoxville
Living and working in Knoxville, Lingerfelt has learned the city inside and out and loves to share her favorite spots with others:
Food
Good Golly Tamale, or Potchke, which is a fantastic Jewish deli.
Drink
Lilly Pad Hopyard, that’s a little slice of
Tennessee paradise.
Browsing
I like to take visitors to RALA and The Maker Exchange to look at local art. I was a part of
the Maker Exchange murals and I also host a workshop there, so it’s an opportunity to showcase how Knoxville brings murals in wherever they can.
Outdoors
I love going to Ijams Nature Center, which has great trails to walk along the river.
Quiet time
I sometimes take a book or my tablet for some quiet work hours at Old Gray Cemetery or the Knoxville National Cemetery after picking up some caffeine at Remedy Coffee.
Experience
Nature is such a great, accessible part of being around Knoxville. You have the mountains, the water — it’s everything.
Though she looks forward to opportunities to travel more — she participated in her first mural festival this year in Macon, Georgia, and was recently commissioned to do a piece 500 miles away in Baltimore — Knoxville will always be a home base for Lingerfelt. She was recently selected to contribute to KnoxWalls at Emory Place, a project in North Knoxville featuring more than 7,000 square feet of large-scale murals by artists from around the country. Lingerfelt says it was an honor to be grouped with these artists, “some that I’ve just been gaga over for years. These artists have painted internationally. They’re a big deal.”
Dogwood Arts, which helped spearhead the KnoxWalls project, also commissioned Lingerfelt on behalf of the Downtown Knoxville Alliance to create a new mural in Strong Alley to mark the arrival of each new season. To date, she has painted 20
of these.
This fall, Dogwood Arts hosted Lingerfelt’s first Tennessee solo gallery exhibition, another milestone for the artist. “It was a great way to celebrate her and all she’s done for our city in such a short period of time,” says Dogwood’s Emily Curran. “So many people came to celebrate her. Her exhibit set the record for sales in our gallery.”
She adds: “Each place that she goes, she spreads positivity about public art and connects the community with whatever space she’s beautifying. It improves accessibility to art for everyone.”
