Page 14 - the NOISE July 2013

A detail of In My Life by Shonto Begay, part of the artist’s new body of work at West of the Moon Gallery.
FeedinG the muses
Northern Arizona painter Shonto Begay has had a full year, finding himself in many different locales. He’s been in Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona and France, and tells me a bit about his artist in residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“In August, I spent a month as a resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico with twelve artists in their mid-careers in all disciplines of art. We all grew in our own chosen art field and became friends and confidants. They were an amazing group of artists from all over the world, from all walks of life.”
“This last month found me finishing a set of 4 murals for the Coconino Center for the Arts with the help of two young artists from the Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Acad- emy,” he says.
Currently Mr. Begay has paintings at the Utah Museum of Fine Art in Salt Lake City, Utah, and this July will be featured at West of the Moon Gallery in Flagstaff.
“My annual West of the Moon Gallery show is coming up the First Friday in July. I am looking forward to it,” Mr. Begay tells me of his new show, “Rez Renderings.” “I was in Alaska last year and missed my own open- ing. In light of that, I wanted to title my show,
“Shonto Shows Up.” They are renderings of my world, the world I know and love; a docu- mentation of my life. Some contain trees that have grandparent spirits: strong, solid and permanent.”
“I have trucks and hitchhikers still and that carries me further exploring my hori- zons. Hitchhikers I pick up on the roads have a place in my art world. It is then when I view my land and people on the road with voices
of angst, of hope and sometimes anger. But mostly I connect the landscape with the voices of the people, as disconnected they may seem sometimes. Collectively the body of work is thoughts, deeds, and emotions en- countered in the past year.”
“There is a bullet riddled stop sign, and with the daily news of gun and politics, prayers and curses and of course, sense and insensibility, I thought was very timely to show it again,” he says. “The painting was done in the early 2000’s. I do not delve much into the politics of the world in my art, but it does show up from time to time.”
West of the Moon Gallery, 14 N. San Francisco, will be holding an artists’ recep- tion during the First Friday ArtWalk, July 5, from 6PM to 9PM. WestoftheMoonGallery. com
oF miCe and muRals
As you are driving north on South San Francisco you may notice scaffolding and the mural in progress on Phoenix Avenue’s South facing wall of the Lumberyard Brew- ing co.
R.E. Wall and Margaret Dewar are both directors and artists for Mural Mice Univer- sal and are in the process of painting a new mural depicting the history of Flagstaff.
Mr. Wall tells me about the history of the Mural Mice and how they made their way to Flagstaff. “Mural Mice evolved from a com- munity art initiative entitled, “The Prescott Downtown Mural Project,” he says. “The town of Prescott is run by a group of folks commonly known as the ‘Good Ol’ Boys.’ These are the folks that rode out the rough years when there wasn’t much money in town. Many of them sold their ranching
properties to developers and then attained seats in local government. Today, they try to brand the town as a cowboy town, when in reality; the town is far more diverse and modern. Between 1994 and 2004, the city fathers proclaimed Prescott, ‘Everyone’s Hometown.’ The town doubled in size and a new demographic of people flooded in from all over the world.”
“The Prescott Downtown Mural Project was established in 2005 in an effort to orient and educate us about the living culture and his- tory that defines the community,” Mr. Wall continues. “With the absence of a public art policy, we thought it appropriate to influ- ence any future policy with a good model project. The project would last five years and produce five culturally relevant murals. In order to get a better sense for who actu- ally lives in the town we collected oral stories and visited museum archives. We gathered reams of information and designed several images for each mural. Once the designs were finished, they went on display along with narratives explaining the content. The community was invited to vote for their fa- vorite ones. We called it ‘Artocracy,’ and in- vited the City Council members to cast their vote along with everyone else. Over 2500 people pooled their resources together and helped us to tell their story. Five years later, our murals were speckled throughout the town and the project was a success. Both history and contemporary culture are now on display for all to see.”
Despite the mural project being a success, there was an unexpected problem that arose concerning the Miller Valley Mural painted in 2010. “At the conclusion of our five-year
project, a City Councilman named Steve Blair, known for his opposition to illegal im- migrants, began questioning the rationale behind placing a person of color on a mural at Prescott’s busiest intersection. Through his afternoon radio show, he promulgated a phone-in campaign to pressure the school. If he had looked a bit further into the sub- ject, he would’ve found that the students and faculty at the school chose the image and assisted in its placement. The project was also approved without question in two City Council meetings he attended. To his surprise, the school was comprised of nearly 50% non-white students and 500 people helped to place that mural. Four students at the school were chosen to model for it. It was the prominent child in the foreground that drew fire from him.”
“Consequently, we endured two months of daily slander as cars, who tuned into his show, shouted derogatory statements from the intersection,” Mr. Wall elaborates. “It came as no surprise when political pressure influ- enced school district Superintendent Kevin Kapp to order the skin tone on the Mexican American child in the mural to be lightened. We refused and soon after, we were engulfed in a national discussion about race relations in Arizona. This was not an unfamiliar issue to us because we placed the working class minorities in all our murals and had already received our fair share of abuse for each one. Thankfully, we had cultivated so much sup- port from the progressive community that there was a vocal backlash in opposition to Blair’s views. After the world press stepped off the subject, the local media turned on us. Steve Blair was declared ‘Man of the Year’ and also ‘Prescott’s most honest man’ by conser-
14 • JULY 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us