Downtown Edmond hosts Sunny Dayz Mural Festival

The Sunny Dayz Mural Festival hosted its second annual event in downtown Edmond on August 6, with more than 40 female artists creating new public art. The event is Oklahoma’s first and only mural festival dedicated to celebrating women in the arts.

Sunny Dayz, established in March 2021 by Virginia Sitzes, sets out to empower, elevate and celebrate female and nonbinary artists and muralists through the creation and advocacy of public art. The festival’s core values include a commitment to equitable opportunity and wages, dedicated wall space for “newbies” regardless of age, and the cultivation of their mentorship program that empowers and educates female and nonbinary high school students interested in the arts.

Ultimately, Sunny Dayz seeks to uplift and support artists who have been subjected to inequity based on age, race, and gender. Even though women make up nearly 50% of working artists, they are continuously put at a disadvantage in the arts. On average, women artists only make 74 cents for every dollar earned by male artists, and less than 25% of the 27,000 artists on view at art fairs in 2018 were women.