This past summer, it seemed as though beautiful, cosmopolitan, street-smart murals were blossoming everywhere, as teams of artists began painting walls throughout the city and along the Cherry Creek and Platte River greenways, thanks to funding from the city's Urban Arts Fund graffiti-prevention program(artsandvenuesdenver.com). Individual collaborators included everyone from student artists from VSA Arts to international artists such as Brazil's Bruno Novelli and Claudio Ethos, with a wide swath of local writers, fine artists and muralists carrying the most weight, transforming walls in Denver into the kind of graphically sophisticated, community-minded concrete-and-brick canvases we're used to seeing in cities around the world.