New murals recently installed on some streets in downtown Bozeman celebrate the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Artist and Little Shell tribal member Ivy Peapod painted the three identical murals showing three bears — a polar bear, brown bear and black bear, each surrounded by a rainbow aura. They’re walking together toward a rain cloud.
“In Indigenous culture bears represent family and really just being a fierce protector of the ones you love," Peapod said. "When I was imagining this art piece I was kind of trying to call on Bozeman to treat everybody as a family and accept each other where we are."
The city of Bozeman, Gender Equality Montana and the Downtown Bozeman Partnership collaborated on the “Intersectional Art” project.
Ellie Staley with the Downtown Bozeman Partnership says not only do the paintings support diversity, but it’s also creating a traffic calming situation, which is, of course, on Babcock a great location to kind of calm down traffic with so much pedestrian activity downtown."
The artwork is located by the pedestrian crossings at an intersection at the intersection of Babcock Street and Black Avenue near the downtown post office.
Staley says another street mural is planned a couple of blocks away on the corner of Mendenhall and Black.
