33The Six-Story Gift
“The Gift” by Bradley Settles, 2021 · painted on the Waco Hippodrome’s stage wall — six stories of brick — and deliberately left unsigned · its making was the pilot episode of Magnolia Network’s Public ArtistMURAL
A TV network filmed its first-ever episode watching this wall get painted.
Six stories of windowless brick behind the Hippodrome theater, covered floor-to-sky in enormous overlapping leaves — deep teals and greens out of Cameron Park — tied at the bottom with a painted bow of twine. It's called The Gift, by Waco artist Brad Settles, and it is deliberately unsigned. His logic is hard to argue with: a gift doesn't need a name tag.
It's also a TV star. The making of this wall was the pilot episode of Magnolia Network's Public Artist — a camera crew followed Settles up the scaffolding for Chip and Joanna's network while he turned a parking-lot wall into the tallest painting on this trail. Which means you're standing where the establishing shot was filmed. From this same spot you can see Suarez's egg-beater Starry Night and walk thirty seconds to a genuine Blek le Rat. One parking lot. Three stories. Waco doesn't announce these things; it just leaves them out for whoever looks up.