A bare-chested woman swimming from the mouth of a fish. Seaweed and skulls. A pipesmoking dog perched on a whale. If any of this sounds familiar, you’ve likely encountered the surreal and distinctive mural work of Michael Ezzell. From the brick walls of Blick Art Materials to the windows of the beloved local shop Frog and Toad, Ezzell’s fantastical style has found a home in Rhode Island’s visual landscape.
Recently, PVDFest collaborated with Frog and Toad, who commissioned Ezzell to design and create original art for their 2025 poster design. Over coffee at Sin, a creative haunt on Westminster Street, I spoke with Ezzell about art, mythology, public space, and Providence’s creative identity crisis.
Originally from Georgia, Ezzell studied illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design. After graduating, he was deciding between moving to Chicago or Providence, but ultimately it took a few printmaking friends in RI and the city’s affordability to push him towards Rhode Island nine years ago. “I had heard about AS220 and the printmaking scene here,” he said. “And once I got here, I found a really great community printshop with service hours, amazing connections, and this unique environment that felt really alive”.
After making the move to Providence in 2016, Ezzell spent several years as part of the AS220 studio community before finding his own studio space. RI printmaking culture, deeply cultivated by “old age RISD,” has been a constant source of inspiration, he said, even as newer RISD graduates increasingly move to larger cities like New York.
Ezzell’s first job in RI was working the sales floor of Frog & Toad. When the pandemic hit, the store pivoted to in-house production, and Ezzell began designing and printing their merchandise. When PVDFest reached out to the store to design an original poster for the 2025 festival, Ezzell says he knew he wanted to reference the city’s vibrant music and food scene. “They gave me a million ideas to include,” Ezzell laughed. “Music, food, performance, energy… it was about finding one image to carry all of that.” In the resulting design, a figure of a bass drummer wielding a kitchen ladle drumstick, pays homage to the Extraordinary Rendition Band, to Providence protest marching groups, while also nodding at PVD’s vibrant culinary scene.
“It’s lively and energetic…like the festival,” he said. “And it has this expressive linework and color that I pulled a bit from New Orleans jazz posters.”
The design can be preordered on shirts on PVDFest’s website, with more merchandise dropping throughout the summer, and a limited edition 18×24 poster print of the design being sold in-store at Frog and Toad.
When Ezzell isn’t working in the store at Frog and Toad he spends time in his studio, printmaking, painting, and doing mural commissions around the state. Ezzell references the pandemic as spurring mural commissions. “I think murals are a really great opportunity for people to engage with art work on a lowthreshold basis. I think public art is really great for that. And there’s been a really large push for community involvement in public art and just showing community and happiness and joy.”
Ezzell sees public art as a form of escapism, and as an opportunity to reimagine the world around him, inviting individuals into his mindscape. “I’m much more fascinated with things that are weird and things that are not real. I think especially in public art settings it’s much more interesting to me to like this kind of escape. And I think that if you beautify a 50 ft. wall, it’s kind of cool to turn that corridor into a different world rather than kind of painting a mirror.”
Many of his recurring motifs, nautical creatures and mythical beings, are drawn from RI’s landscape and culture. “I think referencing the Ocean State is an easy shorthand for ‘local,’ but it’s also really rich visually,” he said. “I try to avoid the kitschy stuff unless I’m leaning into it with irony.”
Since high school, Ezzell has been fascinated with mythologies, ancient manuscripts, and antique textbooks. His most recent independent project is a throughline of this, a set of Othrysian Tarot featuring Ezell’s own unique art and print designs. “I think it’s sort of like me creating my own mark in those different realms… It becomes a big collaboration between me and the original illustrator, and I think the Tarot deck is an opportunity for me to introduce or overlay my visual language on top of existing themes.” Ezzell’s Othrysian Tarot Deck is available for pre-order now on his website, along with his other past independent projects and merchandise.
Since 2016, Ezzell has seen Providence’s art landscape shift. While still inspired by the city’s creativity, he’s wary of rising costs and shrinking opportunities. “I think spaces are becoming less affordable for artists who want to stay here. Studio spaces are harder to come by here, and there aren’t really that many galleries to show work. I feel like a lot of art is now centered around events rather than intimate settings.”
Once a city known for its “DIY” spirit, and subversiveness, Ezzell wonders how much longer Providence can still call itself the “Creative Capital.” “I would hear stories of people living in mill buildings, forming these sort of artist communes,” he said. “Now everything is more expensive, and everyone’s just focused on making it. I think there’s still echoes of it around the city… but it’s different.”
Still, he sees hope in grassroots events like the recent art biennial at Atlantic Mills, and believes that public art is more critical than ever in today’s often isolating, digital age. “We need 10 times more of that, more spontaneous art,” he said. “I feel like music and food are the two things that still draw people out, art can too.”
Michael Ezzell’s PVDFest 2025 poster is available for preorder at pvdfest.com. His Orthysian tarot deck, and more of his independent work can be found at mezzell.com.