We were lucky to catch up with Allison Dunavant recently and have shared our conversation below.
Allison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
I am Alli Dunavant and I am a Charleston, SC based muralist and co-owner of the business Girls Who Paint Murals. This partnership includes myself and Christine Crawford-a Columbia, SC based muralist. We met via instagram while both having separate mural businesses. Due to the need for assistance on larger scale murals to help meet client deadlines we decided to work together. Working together allowed us to take on more work and be more efficient for our customers; and allowed us to truly serve our clients. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to call this partnership that wasn’t cheesy or complicated- and decided to name our business what it was- girls painting murals. While we are called Girls Who Paint Murals our goal as we move into the future is to create an inclusive team of artists, both guys and girls, to create our large scale work.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Alli and I am a muralist. I am based in Charleston, SC but serve the South East (namely SC, NC, GA, FL, VA) creating murals, custom wall art, and doing handpainted logos/signage. I provide murals for anything from a dining room of a personal residence to the side of a public city building. I am very much client based conceptually and stylistically- so rather than working in my own set style of art I cater to the client’s specific vision or business needs to create large scale painting for them. I think this is what really sets my business apart from that of other artists.
I have my BA in Studio Art, as well as my MFA in Studio Art, and I kind of fell into doing murals. My original goal with my education and art was to teach at the college level; but I didn’t love the environment of academia. I did love being self employed and during COVID decided to build a portfolio and practice doing murals. Over time I progressively did more and more, and now this is the only type of work I provide. I am really proud of the way my business has grown over the last few years and the ability I now have to make my clients’ dreams tangible.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
I met Christine through instagram. She is a muralist based in Columbia, SC and I had been following her on instagram for a while. I got offered a job doing a large scale mural for the Boys and Girls Club of Hilton Head, SC but the client needed the mural done in 3 days. I realized that physically this would not be possible for me solo; and I asked Christine if she’d be interested in helping. We worked so well together and quickly recognized the strengths of one another in a way that allowed us to work efficiently together. Over time we did more and more murals together to the point where we decided to create the partnership that is Girls Who Paint Murals.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I think building an audience on social media just requires persistence. As a business, and as an artist, you have to remember that people aren’t just buying your product or service, they are buying YOU. So it is incredibly important to showcase yourself as a person and your lifestyle in a way that advocates for your business in both a professional and personable manner. I would also say that more importantly than the number of followers you have, is the accessibility of your product or service. When people come to your social media page do they immediately know what service you are providing, what you’re selling, what it costs, and how to contact you? If these things aren’t clear for your potential customers they lose interest and you lose the work.
I always say though, that the amount of followers or size of your social media audience does not directly translate to the monetary success of your business- and I don’t believe that artist’s/business owners always need to obsess over this measure of popularity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.allisondunavant.com and www.gwpmurals.com
- Instagram: @allireneeart and @girlswhopaintmurals
- Facebook: Alli Renee Art
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-dunavant/