Say Goodbye To Beloved Music Legend Dolly Parton At This Colorful North Carolina Mural
For once, the brightest thing on Haywood Road is carrying a little sadness.
Dolly Parton still smiles from the wall in West Asheville, painted in the bold colors that always seemed to suit her. But since her passing on August 25, that familiar face has become somewhere people stop instead of simply pass.
Flowers now gather below the portrait. Notes appear beside them.
Even passing drivers have joined the farewell with a quick sound of the horn.
It feels almost like a song unfolding on the sidewalk.
The mural was painted years before anyone knew it would someday hold this kind of meaning. Back then, it celebrated a woman North Carolina loved.
Now it is helping people say goodbye to her. The colors have not changed, yet somehow the whole wall looks different.
Dolly spent a lifetime giving people songs for moments they could not quite put into words.
This time, the flowers are doing the singing.
Stop By The Mural That Has Become A Place For Fans To Say Goodbye
The gathering began almost immediately after news of Parton’s death reached Asheville. By the afternoon of August 25, admirers were already stopping outside Beauty Parade, and the collection of tributes continued growing over the following days.
The mural covers an exterior wall of the salon at 783 Haywood Road, near the corner of Haywood Road and Mildred Avenue in West Asheville. Flowers began lining the sidewalk beside the building, creating an informal memorial around a piece of art that had already attracted visitors for years.
People paused for photographs or simply stood facing the portrait for a while. Passing drivers occasionally honked in tribute, adding an unexpected soundtrack to the otherwise personal moments unfolding beside the wall.
There is no ticketed attraction or formal memorial entrance to navigate. The artwork is part of the neighborhood streetscape, just as it was before August 25.
What changed is the reason many people are stopping. A wall once visited mostly for its cheerful public art has become a place where fans can gather around a familiar image while saying goodbye.
You Can Leave Flowers Notes And Small Tributes Beneath Her Portrait
Color has been gathering at ground level as well as across the painted bricks. Visitors have brought bouquets to the mural since Parton’s passing, while other tributes have included notes, books, chalk messages, mementos, and stuffed animals.
Families have arrived together, with parents bringing children to add something of their own to the growing memorial. The collection is informal, which fits naturally with a mural that has always belonged to a busy neighborhood rather than a museum.
There is no prescribed way to participate. A flower can sit beside a handwritten message, while another visitor may choose to leave nothing and simply spend a few minutes looking at the portrait.
The location remains the exterior of a working hair salon, so keeping walkways and entrances clear helps the memorial coexist with everyday business around the building. That ordinary setting is one of the reasons the tribute feels so personal.
People are not entering a purpose-built monument. They are arriving on Haywood Road with something small in their hands and adding it to what their neighbors have already left behind.
The result keeps changing as new visitors stop by.
Look Closely At The Vintage Image That Inspired The Painting
The portrait was already a neighborhood landmark long before it became a memorial. Beauty Parade owner Terra Marshall commissioned Asheville artist Gus Cutty in 2018 after deciding to replace an older mural on the building.
Cutty based his work on a vintage image of a younger Parton, explaining at the time that he particularly liked the look and spirit of her earlier career.
He completed the original Dolly portion in about four days, working directly across the brick surface and using an image on his phone as a reference.
The finished portrait captures the exaggerated blonde hair and bright expression that made Parton instantly recognizable even from across the street.
Cutty’s painted flowers bring additional color into the composition, while the brick remains visible enough to remind viewers that this is still a piece of outdoor street art rather than a smooth studio canvas.
The scale changes dramatically when seen in person. From a passing car, the face reads immediately.
Standing nearby reveals how the portrait works across individual bricks and mortar lines. That craftsmanship helped turn what began as a salon-wall makeover into an Asheville attraction people were visiting years before the flowers appeared beneath it.
See How RuPaul Became Part Of The Wall Years Later
Dolly did not remain alone forever. In 2021, Beauty Parade invited Gus Cutty back to expand the mural, and RuPaul gradually appeared beside Parton’s portrait.
Salon owner Terra Marshall described the addition as a gift centered on love, kindness, and supporting one another during a difficult period.
The salon kept the identity of Parton’s new companion secret while Cutty worked, encouraging people to guess who would eventually share the wall.
Once the finished portrait was revealed, RuPaul noticed the artwork online and responded, “Gorgeous! I hope it’s real.” He later shared the mural on Instagram.
The pairing gained another burst of attention in 2022 when the mural appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Contestants were challenged to recreate imagery inspired by it during a mini-challenge, carrying a West Asheville salon wall onto national television.
Today the two portraits remain side by side, but the scene beneath them has changed. Parton’s half of the wall now overlooks the flowers and messages left after her death, adding an unexpected new chapter to artwork that had already evolved once before.
Read The Messages Fans Have Added Since Her Passing
The sidewalk has begun telling its own story beneath the painted portrait. Along with flowers, visitors have added handwritten notes and chalk messages, while books and other personal objects have appeared among the tributes.
Those messages reflect why Parton’s following extended well beyond people who simply enjoyed her songs.
Fans gathering at the mural have spoken about her generosity and her support for children’s literacy, while others have remembered the kindness and acceptance she represented to them personally.
Her Imagination Library became one of the most visible parts of that legacy, distributing books to children on an enormous scale during her lifetime. Asheville’s connection became particularly visible after her passing.
ArtsAVL pointed residents and visitors toward the Beauty Parade mural as a place to remember her, calling attention to the artwork at Haywood Road and Mildred Avenue. Reading the tributes adds something a photograph of the mural alone cannot capture.
The artwork shows a cultural icon at monumental scale. The messages underneath bring the focus back down to individual people explaining, in their own words, why she mattered to them.
Spend A Quiet Moment At One Of Asheville’s Most Recognizable Murals
Long before August 2026, visitors were already pulling over to see the Dolly Parton and RuPaul mural. Beauty Parade describes the artwork as one of the salon’s signature attractions, and Cutty’s own mural site calls it a tourist destination that became even more recognizable after RuPaul was added.
The outdoor location means the artwork remains visible as part of an ordinary walk along Haywood Road rather than requiring admission to a gallery. That accessibility has become particularly meaningful now that the wall is serving as an informal place of remembrance.
Visitors can spend as much or as little time there as they need before continuing through West Asheville.
The surrounding neighborhood remains active, so cars pass and nearby businesses continue through their normal routines even as people stop beside the flowers.
That contrast keeps the memorial grounded in daily life. It is possible to arrive expecting a quick photograph and end up lingering longer once the handwritten messages come into view.
The mural was designed to be bright and celebratory, and it still is. Grief has not erased that character.
Instead, the artwork’s familiar color now shares space with a quieter kind of attention from fans who have come to remember the person behind the portrait.
The mural stands at 783 Haywood Road, where Asheville artist Gus Cutty first painted Parton in 2018
Notice How A Salon Wall Turned Into An Unexpected Memorial
Nobody painted the wall expecting it to serve this purpose eight years later. Terra Marshall originally commissioned the Dolly portrait because she wanted new artwork outside Beauty Parade and admired Parton for the warmth and acceptance she represented.
Cutty’s 2018 painting quickly became a destination of its own, with Marshall saying years ago that people regularly stopped to photograph it. Then came RuPaul in 2021, followed by national television attention in 2022.
The mural kept accumulating stories before August 25 added its most emotional chapter. Visitors began arriving at the salon within about an hour of the first reports of Parton’s death, and the gathering continued as flowers collected beneath the artwork.
Beauty Parade remained what it had always been: a working West Asheville hair salon with an unusually famous exterior wall. Yet the space beside it became somewhere people instinctively understood they could gather.
There was no need to construct a monument or organize a formal ceremony first. The portrait was already there, familiar enough that Asheville residents knew exactly where to go.
That spontaneous transformation says as much about the mural’s place in the neighborhood as it does about the woman it depicts.
Leave With One More Reminder Of How Deeply Her Legacy Reached
Dolly Parton’s passing on August 25, 2026, brought tributes from around the world, but the scene on Haywood Road shows how remembrance can happen on a much smaller scale.
She passed away at age 80 after a career that made her one of the most recognizable figures in American music while also building an enormous philanthropic legacy.
In West Asheville, that history has been condensed into a sidewalk filled with flowers beneath a portrait painted years before anyone expected it to become a memorial. The location carries an especially strong Appalachian connection.
Parton grew up in East Tennessee, while Asheville and the surrounding western North Carolina mountains share many of the cultural traditions that shaped her music and public identity.
Local fans who gathered after her passing spoke as much about her generosity and acceptance as they did about individual songs.
The mural will remain after the temporary tributes are eventually cleared away. Dolly will still be smiling beside RuPaul toward passing traffic, just as she has for years.
What has changed is the story visitors now bring with them when they stop beneath it.
