Deep Ellum Art

Deep Ellum mural project recognizes 6 Dallas artists with top awards

The "Deep Ellumphants" mural was one of six winners.

Photo courtesy of Adrian Torres

Six murals have been selected as winners in a public art project in Deep Ellum, including a much-admired mural of elephants painted on the side of a building at 3601 Main St.

Called "42 Murals," it's a project spearheaded by 42 Galleries, a floating gallery concept from 42 Real Estate, the Deep Ellum development company owned by Scott Rohrman. Founded in 2015, 42 Galleries was conceived as a way to add public art in Deep Ellum.

"We consider the entire neighborhood to be a gallery," Rohrman says. "We've had more than 150 art exhibitions in and around our buildings, and just started calling it 42 Galleries as a catch phrase."

For this contest, they recruited 42 artists to paint artworks on various blank walls, 42 being the lucky number.

The six winning murals fall into two sets. One set earned the most "likes" on the 42 Murals Instagram site, including Social Worship" by Jeremy Biggers and "Viva Deep Ellum" by Jorge Gutierrez.

A second set was awarded for outstanding work, committed community involvement, inspiration to the overall project, high number of likes, and service to others.

"Deep Ellumphants" by Adrian Torres, which won the Catalyst Award
"Deep Rawlins" by Steve Hunter, which won the Community Award
"Catching Fish" by Dan Colcer, which won the Character Award

Rohrman gives a nod to all of the muralists, stating that, "We were also proud of the murals who did not receive awards, because those murals are well-loved by many people as well."

The murals led to other commissions, following the visibility brought by participation in the 42 Murals project. "We were contacted by interested parties from New York, Australia, London, and many other places," Rohrman says. "One of the artists was selected by a city in another state to curate and help run a mural project based on the 42 Murals project and they found this artist via 42 Murals."

A 2017 edition is underway, with the theme being portraits, which can be realistic or abstract. Artists can submit as many entries as they choose. A stipend will be paid, and the artist is not committed to paint the mural just by submitting. Practices from the 2015 Edition may or may not be followed in the 2017 Edition, but they will be similar.

The deadline for submissions is April 15 at 4:42 pm. Submissions can be emailed to 42murals@42realestate.com.

These being murals, their essential nature is fleeting, Rohrman says.

"We don't guarantee permanent status to any mural, and the artists all understood that their murals would be painted over at some point, or removed for construction or other reasons," he says. "But the goal is to keep the murals that resonate with the public for a longer time."

awards

GIFTED AND TALENTED

SMU historian Ariel Ron wins prestigious $800k MacArthur genius grant

Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

SMU historian Ariel Ron will receive $800,000 — no strings attached.

Three Texans have been named 2026 MacArthur Fellows, one of the most prestigious honors in the U.S. for artists, scientists, and scholars. Among them is Dallas historian and author Ariel Ron, who directs the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.

San Antonio's Vincent Valdez and San Marcos-based anthropologist Kate Spradley were also on the 2026 list of 20 recipients of the “genius grants” given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Each fellow will receive $800,000 over five years, with no strings attached.

Individuals do not apply for the honor. The grants are awarded via a confidential, multi-step process managed by the foundation, and many recipients express surprise that they were considered for the fellowship.

“While individuals will have a track record of significant achievement, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award — it is an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential,” wrote MacArthur on its website. “The Fellows Program is proactively working to foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies.”

Ron's research focuses on how Northern agriculture shaped economic growth and federal power in 19th-century America. Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic, his 2020 book, challenges the notion of an industrial North versus an agrarian South.

"My approach is to identify and look carefully at things that everyone knows to be important but are somehow too obvious-seeming to look at closely," Ron says in a video on the MacArthur Foundation's website. "If you scratch the surface a little bit, you discover that there are a lot of interesting things that might change the way we think about bigger questions."

Valdez, who splits his time between San Antonio and Houston, is known for large, hyperrealistic drawings and paintings of Mexican American life. More recently, he has turned his focus to broader sociopolitical issues in works like The Strangest Fruit, a series of paintings confronting the lynching of Latinos.

At Texas State University in San Marcos, forensic anthropologist Spradley founded Operation Identification in 2013 — a program that identifies and repatriates the remains of migrants who died along the Texas-Mexico border. She is also a cofounder of the Forensic Border Coalition, which pushes for policy changes at the local and national levels. Spradley is the school’s first MacArthur Fellow.

A full list of the 2026 MacArthur Fellows can be found online.

arts grants macarthur grants southern methodist university visual arts