How Houston’s 400+ Mini Murals Tell the Story of the City

The late Monica Roberts in Montrose. Consider the traffic control cabinet. An unassuming, generic gray box emblematic of homogenous urbanity—the office cubicle of public infrastructure—and easily ignored when out for a stroll or a drive. Yet while most of us view them as dull mundanities fading into the cityscape, others see a blank canvas. In Houston, graffiti, wheatpaste posters, and stickers frequently adorn these cabinets, adding a creative DIY flair to the city’s aesthetic. The Mini Murals initiative takes this concept and stretches it into a citywide project involving dozens of local artists and the 400 utility cabinets (and counting) that bear their visions. It launched in 2015 with a pilot project of 31 boxes, spearheaded by Elia and Noah Quiles of UP Art Studio. Some of the first features included iconic Houston street artists DUAL and Wiley Robertson, the multidisciplinary Alex “Zú” Arzú and Shelbi Nicole, 3-D painter Lee Washington, and Sebastien “Mr. D” Boileau, with whom UP had previously collaborated on Préservons la Creation, the iconic Midtown mural that spans an entire city block. Préservons la Creation “opened up our eyes to fundraising for public art projects,” Elia Quiles says. “It was such a huge success. We were...