McMinnville Art Alley

For years the narrow service corridor running between NE Davis and NE Evans Streets, off NE 3rd, held exactly one piece of art: Andy Phillips’ 2017 mural of a woman with flowers in her hair, known around town as The Chicken Lady. Artists working in the shops backing onto the alley used to say the blank concrete back there ought to be covered. In the summer of 2024 it was. The McMinnville Downtown Association won a $50,000 T-Mobile Hometown Grant, Visit McMinnville matched it with cash and a project manager, and nine local and regional muralists turned a service alley into McMinnville Art Alley — an open-air gallery that is free, unlocked, and open to anyone walking past.

The murals are deliberately about this place. Colt Bowden, a McMinnville sign painter, filled a long wall with a postcard-style ‘Greetings From McMinnville,’ painted across from the town’s oldest surviving ghost sign. Katie Daisy and Karen Eland assembled a portrait of local flora and fauna — Anna’s hummingbird, Kincaid’s lupine, and the rare Fender’s Blue Butterfly. Atma Roshni gave that same butterfly its own wall. Murphy Phelan adapted his McMinnville playing-card design into a loose narrative of winemaking, UFOs, ghost stories, and Beverly Cleary. Natalie Fletcher, whose shop sits around the corner, keyed her palette to a late-summer wine country sunset. Work by Joel Homes, Jessilyn Brinkerhoff, Jillian Bird, Kitana Connelly, and Saiyare Refaei fills out the rest.

The project has since grown beyond the walls. The Alley Galley, a multi-use arts space inside the Visit McMinnville offices at 424 NE 4th St, hosts community art projects and rotating exhibitions by local artists. The alley itself asks nothing of visitors — no ticket, no hours to plan around, no gatekeeping. It is a ten-minute detour off Third Street that most people end up spending half an hour in.