Artist Garrison Gist has already shown us a couple of his murals around Charlotte, but it’s over brunch that we really see the impact of his work. 

The former Gamecock fullback has brought us to one of his favorite brunch spots, Uptown Yolk, where one of his large comic-strip style murals dominates a prominent wall. As he’s talking about his inspiration, a young woman steps in front of it so her mom can take her photo, but Gist stays mum. 

“I love to see people do this,” he says. “It’s just fun. I’ll go find it on Instagram later because most people will tag the restaurant. I’ll just ‘like’ the picture and leave a comment.” 

The Uptown Yolk mural is a great example of Gist’s style: pop art influenced by comic strips, Disney movies and anime, iconic subject matter brought to life with bold swaths of color.

Gist has a lot of interests. For example, in addition to painting canvases and the sides of buildings — and designing hats and shirts — he coaches track at Nation Ford High School in Fort Mill, South Carolina. And that’s my in: “So, how do you support yourself these days?” He calmly points at the mural. It’s all about the art now. Gist just coaches because he loves that, too.

As we leave, we stop to look back. “I wish I’d known they were hanging those green pieces from the ceiling when I did the mural,” he says. “I would’ve used that green instead of that blue!” That’s when another table overhears him and interrupts: “Are you the artist?”

Gist graduated with a studio art degree from USC in 2015, but the aspiring artist was an accomplished athlete as well. In high school, he played football and excelled at power lifting; at Carolina, he almost became a cheerleader when a coach spotted him in the stands at Williams-Brice.

“I thought about it, and I worked out with the squad for a couple months, but I had a real conversation with the coach and told him my heart just wasn’t into this,” Gist says. 

But his urge to keep playing football was strong, so in the spring of his sophomore year Gist walked on. The fullback position didn’t get used much his junior and senior seasons, but earning a spot on the team during 
his second year of college gave him an extra semester in the classroom.

“I took three art history courses that last semester, and I got an internship at the 701 Whaley gallery,” Gist says. “That taught me so much about art administration, galleries and curation, and I had some great professors. That extra semester launched me into that side of the art world and introduced me to a lot of new people. I just kept building on it from there.”

After graduation, Gist, a Rock Hill native, moved to Charlotte. It didn’t take him long to settle into the scene. And then one day artist and BLK MRKT studio co-owner Dammit Wesley asked if he’d like to help with a mural. “I’d only worked on canvas to that point,” Gist says. “I’d never done a mural. But my friend said, ‘Trust me. This is going to be big. You want to be a part of this.’”

That first mural was a piece for Black Lives Matter, which landed Gist in The New York Times in 2020 and opened up new opportunities. To date, he has finished almost two dozen murals around the city, some in public spaces, some commissioned by upscale apartment complexes or local businesses.

After brunch, we’re off to his studio at Camp North End, a burgeoning, 76-acre art community where a half-dozen warehouses have been converted into restaurants, boutiques, offices, a coffee shop, a stationery shop, event spaces and studios, including Gist’s.

As he shows us several of his murals on the property and in his studio, he’s truly in his element. He’s already done a piece in Miami and hopes to do more work there, he tells us, and his murals for Charlotte’s professional football, basketball and soccer teams have helped him gain recognition nationwide. “I also want to start hitting different festivals around the country,” he says. “2025 is going to be big.”