KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Almost immediately after Dolly Parton's mural on Strong Alley was defaced, artist Megan Lingerfelt got a call.
The original artist who completed the mural back in 2019, Colton Valentine, reached out to her himself.
"He's from out of town. He only had a weekend to work on it, and he actually contacted me before anyone from Dogwood or the city did to fix it," Megan Lingerfelt said.
She tells 10News she too was shocked to see the black lips someone spray painted onto the Dolly Parton mural, and is proud to be able to fix it.
"Someone just came down here and wanted to have some fun destructing things. They hit four other murals. I think someone just came down here with a can of black spray paint and got whatever caught their eye," Lingerfelt said.
Now she is drawing on inspiration from past photos of Dolly to redo the mural, taking bits and pieces from the singer's history.
"I'm giving her a tan, giving her a little more color," Lingerfelt said. "Looking at a bunch of her photos like when she's in the 70s...picking lips from this and hair from this."
The touched up mural of Parton will feature butterflies and add more depth to the original. The city says they will expect the mural to be complete sometime next week.
