Transforming Walls. Celebrating Place.
The Truckee River Bridge Mural Project
Three Years in the Making
After more than three years of planning, community input, artist selection, agency coordination, and permitting, Arts For The Schools is bringing two monumental murals to the Truckee River Trail in Tahoe City.
The murals will transform the bridge abutment walls and ceiling where the trail passes beneath the Truckee River Bridge near the Tahoe City Transit Center. Visible to pedestrians, bicyclists, and river users, the installation will turn a piece of public infrastructure into a vibrant celebration of the natural, cultural, and artistic identity of the Tahoe and Truckee region.
Installation begins September 9, 2026, with completion anticipated by October 31, weather and site conditions permitting.
Built Through Partnership
Arts For The Schools is leading the production and installation of the murals in collaboration with Placer County, the North Tahoe Community Alliance, Caltrans, the Tahoe City Public Utility District, the participating artists, and additional community partners.
The project has required years of detailed coordination involving artist selection, community engagement, transportation-art review, permitting, maintenance planning, site preparation, traffic control, and public safety.
The commitment of these partners has helped move the mural project from an ambitious community vision to a long-awaited public-art installation.
Community Investment at Work
The Truckee River Bridge Mural Project is funded by the TOT-TBID Dollars at Work program. The NTCA and Placer County invest funds generated by tourism in North Lake Tahoe to support community vitality, environmental stewardship and economic health in the community. Learn more at northtahoecommunityalliance.com.
Two Murals.
Two Remarkable Visions.
A Dip Into the Truckee River Ecosystem
Created by artists Bryn Merrell and Alex Bailey, A Dip Into the Truckee River Ecosystem invites viewers beneath the surface of the Truckee River.
The mural follows the river’s journey from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake and introduces viewers to ecologically significant species found throughout the watershed. Bryn’s playful visual storytelling and Alex’s scientific knowledge come together in a work that is whimsical, educational, and carefully rooted in the natural life of the river.
The Light
Led by mixed-media fine artist Frida Ticehurst, The Light explores the extraordinary and ever-changing light of Lake Tahoe.
Pastel mountains, native vegetation, water, and layered references to the region’s history come together in a work centered on beauty, continuity, and stewardship. The mural considers the ways light shapes how we experience the Tahoe landscape—and how art can illuminate the relationship between nature, memory, culture, and home.
Meet the Artists
Frida Ticehurst
Frida is a mixed media fine artist with indigenous roots and multicultural background. Her art practice focuses on exploring sustainable and regenerative systems for creative expression and art-making. She explores sustainable art through mixed media work, including textile art, fashion design, muraling and painting, installations, and beadwork. Constantly seeking to bring art into nature and nature into art, her practice blends and bridges cultures, techniques, and media, and explores what it means to create beauty and a sense of home outside of her native land. She practices art as both a compass and sanctuary—a way to integrate identity, build community, and ground herself through modern life.
Bryn Merrell
Bryn Merrell spent several years working in the outdoor industry before forging her own path as an independent artist. Spending most of her free time outdoors, Bryn creates a playful and whimsical interpretation of her surroundings through watercolor and ink. Many of her patterns and landscapes are reflections of her roots in Arizona, along with the cultural and natural influence of her current home in Tahoe City, California.
Connect via email at bryn@brynmerrell.com
Alex Bailey
Alex Bailey is a Canadian-American artist and scientific illustrator based in Reno, Nevada. She holds a bachelor’s degree in geology and a master’s degree in environmental geochemistry, bringing a scientist’s curiosity and careful observation of the natural world to her creative practice.
Her watercolor-and-ink artwork is inspired by landscapes, wildlife, and the ecosystems she encounters while hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, and backcountry skiing.
Alex is also the illustrator of Wild Sierra Nevada: A Family Nature Guide, published by the Yosemite Conservancy. She has worked with Tahoe-area students to explore nature journaling and the wildlife of the Sierra Nevada.
Her distinctive combination of science, art, and environmental understanding makes her especially well suited to help tell the ecological story at the heart of A Dip Into the Truckee River Ecosystem.