QR codes provide free walking tour of downtown Kissimmee art, among shops and restaurants
Part of the appeal of downtown Kissimmee is its shops and restaurants. Depending on where they park (or come in on a mass transit like Lynx or SunRail), they can walk for blocks and take in an authentic Main Street, or in this case, Broadway.
Thanks to the Osceola Arts “ARTisNOW” public murals project, that stretch is now also an art gallery.
“These are pieces for the revitalization of downtown,” said Brian Camacho, Osceola Arts’ public arts coordinator.
Those murals started appearing in the downtown corridor in 2019 under the directions of Marilyn Cortes-Lovato, Osceola Arts’ longtime Director of Visual Arts. She retired in 2024, but Camacho picked up her torch in November—overseeing those who’ve picked up a paintbrush in Kissimmee— and stitched the murals into a network and a free walking tour.
Nearly all of the 30 or so murals now have a plaque with a QR code. Scan the code and a zoom-able map comes up showing the locations of all the pieces. Some are outside of downtown in the U.S. 192 corridor, at Valencia College and in St. Cloud, but the bulk of the 30 or so pieces are clustered along Broadway, forming a walking tour.
“With the QR code leading to the map, you can literally jump in anywhere, or visit a store or restaurant and pick up where you left off,” Camacho said. “It creates a whole new purpose to be downtown.”
In downtown, they stretch along Broadway from the back of the Kissimmee Main Street building at Neptune Road/ Central Avenue (“Toho Sunset” by Willie Soto) and stretch to “Iron Horse” by C. Stanley Creative near Ruby Street. Stand in the right spot at the corner of Broadway and Monument Avenue and you can take in three of them.
The walk includes the half block-long “Pleasant Street Panorama” that his historical ties to those who’ve been instrumental to downtown coming to look as it does today. Newest on Broadway is Taylor Smith’s “The Garden Within” between Dakin and Monument avenues.
Osceola Arts works with building owners, rather than tenant businesses, to find the potential for “the next piece,” Camacho said. The owners and selected artist work with each other’s ideas to choose what goes up on the wall. The owners commit to the pieces for at least two years.
Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds from the city are used to pay the artists for the pieces.
Since some of the murals are already six years old, and buildings are going through new ownership, downtown patrons will soon see at least one “second generation” mural at Broadway and Darlington, the site of one of the first murals to go up in 2019.
The Orange Gardens Community Center just west of downtown is getting the next colorful mural piece, following one finished earlier this year at the Kissimmee Women’s Club clubhouse on Oak Street.
For more on the murals, the artists and the project, go to www.osceolaarts.org/murals.
