You may have seen them on social media, or you may have seen them around town.

Painted rocks found near the Learning Garden.

Painted rocks found near the Learning Garden.

They are popular at the Learning Garden, showing up on newspaper racks at the post office. They can be found in front of the library or at the ice machine at Moser’s Grocery.

They are rocks. Not just any old rock – painted rocks.

And they are quite the hit.

“This is something as simple as painting a rock and leaving it somewhere to put a smile on someone’s face. It’s simple and it’s positive,” said rock painter Cricket Hackmann.

According to Hackmann, there are two Facebook groups – Southern Boone Rocks and SoBoCo Rocks, and they were started in July. The Mid-Missouri Arts Alliance held a rock painting get-together at the end of July and had a number of rock painting enthusiasts join in the fun.

The idea is simple. People paint rocks bright colors or with short messages on them and hide them – preferably in plain sight – so that people find them. The person who finds the rock can take a photo of it or a selfie with the rock and post it to one of the Facebook pages. Then they can replace the rock with one they’ve painted or re-hide the rock they found.

By Bruce Wallace

~ Find out more in today’s Journal ~