The Pickup's Culture coverage is brought to you by Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery, 40 Years of Empowering Tulsa Artists. Visit TAC Gallery to see American Highway Revisited by VC Torneden and Melinda Harvey Green, June 5 – 27, 2026.
“Admiror o pariens te non cecidisse ruinis qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas // I'm amazed, oh wall, that you haven't fallen into ruins since you hold the boring scribbles of so many writers.” —Anonymous graffiti, Pompeii
For Habit Mural Festival’s seventh go-round this year, instead of focusing on one building as they’ve done in the past, the public art bonanza took over the Pearl District. Up and down 6th Street between Peoria and Utica, 15 new large-scale murals now dot the landscape after a late-May two-day festival that included 20 individual artists and art collectives, music and dance performances, and even a special beer release at American Solera.
With the festival long over, the paint dry, and the beer drunk, I returned to the scene to see how one of Tulsa’s most curious corridors was coming along after renewed attention from the film industry, municipal care, and nonprofit placemaking.
Using the map of the murals provided by Habit Mural Festival, whose name is often shortened to just “Habitfest,” I decided to walk the entirety of the works as if it were a traditional art gallery. Any city is walkable with enough determination, sunscreen, and self-hatred. (Except for San Antonio. Between Victor Wembanyama crash-outs and an average walkability score of 37/100, pick a struggle. Tulsa, on the other hand, with its average walkability score of 39, is a beacon of on-foot travel.)
The roughly half-mile of murals between The Center for Public Secrets to the west and American Solera to the east is mostly an enjoyable, albeit very sunny walk. A majority of the works are clumped closer to the now-closed coffee shop formerly known as Cirque, with a few more over near Nothing’s Left Brewing, then finally on some shipping containers in the American Solera parking lot. A large “Improve Our Tulsa” sign notes that the “Non-Arterial Street Rehabilitation” is just under 50% finished with a completion date of Fall 2026. A damaged “Business Access” sign leans towards it.