Festus Main Street has been more colorful lately.
Two professional freelance artists – Emily Baker of Festus and Kenzie Wolk of Ste. Genevieve –have been working independently to bring the seasons to life with window paintings at businesses all around the Twin City area.
Baker, 37, said her mother was an artist, so painting is in her blood.
“I just was always watching her growing up. That’s how I became an artist was watching her do it,” said Baker, who studied art at Fontbonne University in St. Louis.
She said she spent some time as a professional artist and recently decided to try out window painting, following in her mother’s footsteps.
“I never was interested in (window painting) when I was a teenager,” she said. “(My mom) kept dragging me out to help her and I kind of was too cool to be bothered with it. She passed away a couple of years ago and I just really had a strong feeling that she was telling me to do it, so that’s how I got into it myself.”
Baker started going door to door to see if any business owners were interested in hiring her to paint their windows. She said The Brick and The Daisy Chain were among the first businesses to give her a chance, and after painting their windows, business began to boom.
“It had a life of its own. Once I got the first one, it just kind of took over,” she said. “I didn’t have to beg or anything.”
Baker has since painted windows for the Twin City Area Chamber of Commerce in Festus, Crystal City Hall, Twin Cities Best Kept Secret in Festus, 3:33 Salon in Festus, and most recently she painted the murals inside the city’s newest Mexican restaurant, Casa Charro, in Crystal City.
Wolk, 37, said she also comes from a family of artists and studied art at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. She operated a wine-and-painting business, Uncorked Artists, for five years while balancing her time with being a stay-at-home mom.
When her youngest child entered kindergarten, Wolk said she worked as a freelance artist, painting portraits of both humans and pets. Then she taught herself calligraphy and realized her talent at lettering lent itself well to painting signs and her real passion – murals.
“I like that my stuff is on display all the time with a mural and that people can just walk by and enjoy it without having to be at a gallery or someplace special to actually see it,” she said.
Wolk has painted murals inside Pine Mountain Coffee on Festus Main Street and on both the inside and outside of the Mary Jane Burgers and Brew locations in Perryville and Cape Girardeau.
Once Wolk became known for her murals, she said the calls for window painting started coming in for the holidays. She painted windows at several Festus businesses, including Queen Anne’s Lace, Four Brothers Mead and Fitness N.O.W. She also has painted windows at Festus Library and Mercy Hospital Jefferson in Crystal City.
While Baker and Wolk were painting windows in the Twin City area at the same time, they were not working together and didn’t know each other at first.
When the two finally met, they exchanged stories about how each had been told there was another window painter working on Main Street. People also told the two painters they looked alike.
The two have since become friends and share advice.
“It’s definitely not a competition thing between the two of us,” Wolk said. “We’re actually very reliant on each other for communication and just artist to artist friendship now.”
Both Wolk and Baker said they have plenty of upcoming projects in the Twin Cities to keep them hard at work.
“Festus is a very open community to the arts,” Baker said.
She also said Twin City-area residents seem to particularly like the window paintings. “I think it was fun and it was different, and post-COVID everyone was ready for a breath of fresh air. I think it was just a perfect storm, perfect timing. It just really seemed like people were ready for some new energy coming through the town.”