HILLSBOROUGH - Sam Ezell didn't "marry" Durham this weekend. But the 58-year-old folk artist did provide the centerpiece for the reception.

Ezell, a self-taught painter, donated a three-panel streetscape for "Marry Durham," a benefit in which hundreds were expected to take vows to love and respect the Bull City. Donations went to five nonprofits.

Ezell, who was born in Mebane, grew up in Durham but dropped out of school at 16 to help support his mother and four sisters.

When organizers needed help sprucing up for Saturday's big event, Durham gallery owner Pamela Gutlon got them in touch.

Gutlon runs Outsider Art & Collectibles. One day Ezell pulled up to the Iredell Street gallery, got out of his truck and said: "My name is Sam Ezell. I'm friends with [renowned folk artist] Bernice Sims, and I paint."

"Sam is the kind of guy you call and say, 'Can you - ?' and he says yes before you can finish the sentence," she said.

Marry Durham grew out of a conversation between friends at a food truck rodeo. Katherine O'Brien said how much she loved Durham. Crystal Dreisbach told her if she loved Durham so much she should marry it.

Soon a group began planning a mass civic union.

The Durham City Council proclaimed Saturday "Marry Durham Day."

All who adore Durham were invited to the family-friendly event "to affirm their dedication and devotion to the Bull City," according to organizers.

"Vows" included promises to keep Durham's streets clean and safe, shop locally, support the arts and nonprofits, cherish diversity, and elect responsible leaders.

Along with a chance to dance in the street, Marry Durham raised money for the Eno River Association, Genesis Home, Latino Community Development Center, Scrap Exchange and Walltown Children's Theatre.

"I thought, 'That is so Durham,'" Mary McGuigan, Genesis Home's director of development, said earlier this year. "No other community could I see people getting together for what I see as a Durham love fest."

Trip to Alabama

Ezell, a maintenance man at Hillsborough's Daniel Boone Village, has collected Sims' art for many years.

"She is the living Grandma Moses," he said.

Sims, 84, paints scenes from memory of the rural South: baptisms, hog killings, civil rights protests.

When her son died about three years ago, she asked Ezell if he would be like her son and look after her from time to time.

She told him to go home and paint her a painting. Ezell told her he couldn't paint a wall.

But he went home and did a painting for her.

"It didn't look nothing like what I was looking at, but it was the best I could do," he said.

And he kept painting.

Folk artists traditionally have been poor, black artists without formal training, Gutlon said. They told stories through their art.

Today, the definition has expanded. Ezell's bright, colorful flowers, animals and people with "Mr. Bill" faces are a hit at arts shows, where his small paintings start at $45.

He brought 150 canvases to a three-day show in Atlanta and sold 130.

"I don't know," he said, when asked to explain their popularity. "They're cheerful. They're really good for kids' rooms."

He makes his frames from culled plywood, stretches his canvases over two-by-fours, primes and paints.

Sometimes it's just Ezell and his 22-pound cat Buddy. The cat likes to drop a little ball for Ezell to throw down the hall a few times.

"I looked down at him one day, and he was the same color as the painting," Ezell said. "I'd dropped paint all over him."

'Really good'

Sims saw Ezell's promise.

"He painted flowers, then a man with a hat, and it was really good," she said from her Alabama home Wednesday.

The oldest of 10 children, Sims started painting at 9 or 10, carefully squeezing paint from a tube a neighbor bought because her family couldn't afford it.

Sims told Ezell to paint the pictures in his head, not to copy the subjects that other people painted.

"I feel like I'm passing a little something on for the youngsters who haven't seen these things," she said. "Many kids have never been in a garden patch."

Now Ezell is passing something on.

For "Marry Durham," he painted Bull City landmarks like Liberty Warehouse, where as a kid he watched tobacco he'd brought in from the fields with mules get sold. Or the Kress Building, where he ate at the basement soda fountain.

"You'd throw darts at balloons, and the price was inside the balloon on a little piece of paper," he said. "A lot of times you'd get a banana split for like 10 cents."

Ezell was painting at the Outsider gallery recently when a girl about 11 years old started watching him.

He leaned over and pointed to some brushes. When she finished her painting, a little red convertible, and Ezell told her it was hers to keep, she started to cry.

"Momma, look at this," she said. "Look what I made; it's mine."

"She had tears running off her jaw," Ezell said. "She told her mother, 'I wish Daddy could see this.'"

"He's up in heaven looking at you, girl," the mother replied. "He can see it."