Page 17 - The NOISE December 2015

KEEPING THE PEACE IN A WHIRL OF DISCORD
ABOVE: Ends or Beginnings is a new painting by Ms. Fareio featured in her December show, “On the Road Home,” at West of the Moon. OPPOSITE PAGE: a panel from the Pollinator Project.
STORY BY CLAIR ANNA ROSE
Acacophony of ravens swirls in a deep purple-edged sky, the color transitions from fuchsia to orange to a glowing yellow core, where an owl sits on a branch, calm and
still, in the midst of swirling black feathers, cackles and calls. Featured on the cover is Keeping the Peace, by Erica Fareio.
When I first met Ms. Fareio she was a finishing her last season as a full-time river guide on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. Up until that time her paintings had been a passion pursued in small windows of free time on the river, when she could sketch or snap a photo for later reference, when she was back in town, and during the long winter breaks. During the off-season the artist would travel internationally; still, she found space and time to create vibrantly colored paintings with watercolor and ink.
Five years have passed since she decided to cut her river season down to part-time, and give her artwork her full attention. She loved Grand Canyon so much that she didn’t want to feel burned out from all the hard work that a river guide does during the season. She felt like it was time to slow down, get grounded and plant some roots. “I have definitely been more productive and I have always been a believer of what you put in is what you’re going to get out,” Ms. Fareio tells me. “It’s just a matter of making the decision to do art and to put the energy and the time in to pursue it. It’s been rewarding for sure. I live a simple life, but I’ve made it work.”
Keeping the Peace reflects on the contrast of being on the river, where she experienced the quiet of nature, to the busy energy of living in town, checking emails and being connected to a cell phone. The owl represents a calm, still, peaceful state in the midst of chatter, phone calls and the bombardment of social media. “Even though people might be laughing or pointing, or telling you to do this or that, buy this or that; even if it feels like it’s all caving in on you — somehow keeping that space,” she says.
Earlier this year Ms. Fareio painted a mural at Marshall Elementary, illustrating the beauty and importance of pollinators. The project was in partnership with Terra BIRDS, who have implemented garden classrooms across the Flagstaff Unified School District. While the mural was being painted, the children were planting pollinator-friendly gardens in the courtyard. Teachers based some of their classroom projects off of the theme of the mural.
Working in such a large scale after years of smaller, detailed work has made the artist’s approach to painting more efficient, she tells me. “When I first started off I realized at this rate I was going to be here for the next five years!” she exclaimed. “I had to learn to be a little looser and open with
my style. When I’m in the studio working on my watercolor and ink paintings, they’re very detailed and very articulate, and they take a lot of time. I had to learn to just let go a little and be a little more open with my style and not be so critical. It was fun. It was a lot of work, but I would love to do another project like that.”
The five original concept paintings for the Pollinator Project mural are among the artist’s work that will be featured for the month of December at West of the Moon. “The paintings have never been on display before and will be kept together as a set,” Ms. Fareio explains. She spreads the paintings across a table at her home studio so I can see them. Characteristic of her style, the paintings are bright scenes built from little slivers of color framed in black and seem to emulate the look of stained glass or mosaic art. Bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other winged creatures are woven through the scenes; the last in the set shows the San Francisco Peaks capped in snow. Each painting moves through the seasons: autumn with big, drooping sunflower heads heavy with seeds; springtime flowers, and finally deep purples and blues of the desert at night give the feeling of winter, with moths and nighttime pollinators feeding from cacti.
When I arrive at the studio a painting in progress is on the dining room table and paints are spread out beside it. The lines drawn on the watercolor paper show a train as it leaves town, with sunflowers and plants along the tracks going to seed. Portions of the painting are filled in with color. “Realizing that everything is here, and there’s so much beautyineveryday,normallife,”iswhatthepaintingisabout, Ms. Fareio shares. “I was taking a walk with the dogs out alongside the train tracks. It was fall and the seeds of some of the milkweed are what sparked the painting. The milkweed is what butterflies need along their journey. People naively or carelessly mow down those fields and the butterflies don’t have any milkweed to eat.”
As she walked along the tracks, the artist thought about how most people would just consider what she was seeing as weeds or dying plants. She saw the beauty and wanted to capture the moment as she witnessed plants dying, and the season changing from fall to winter. “I’ve never done a train before,” she says. “I liked the idea of combining urban with the just-outside-of-town wild feeling. Being on an adventure right in your own neighborhood; just walking along the train tracks.”
For Ms. Fareio, “On the Road Home” pays tribute to the place she lives. “I realized what a wonderful community we have here,” she tells me. Over the years she has come to the realization that really everything she needs is here, not just in a sense of place but also within her own sense of self. At the
same time she knows that there is a wisdom and a purpose to searching outside herself and traveling, and knows there will be other chapters in her life where she is traveling again. “‘On the Road Home,’ is about coming to a place in your life where you feel content, secure and solid in your own skin,” Ms. Fareio explains. “Realizing you’re on your path. It feels good.”
The title piece of the show, On the Road Home, is a painting of a forest trail leading up to a mountain. On one side of the trail are pines and on the other side aspens. While the aspens look empty and leafless in late autumn, the final blooms of the season are still flowering in shades of purple and red. A warm autumn sunset billows above the green of the mountain. “A lot of my paintings have a path,” Ms. Fareio reflects. “I love to try to engage a person by drawing them in, having some kind of road leading you into the paintings: the road up to the mountain catching the beautiful fall colors; that sense of being home.”
Beside paths through forest and mountain scenes, Grand Canyon makes an appearance in many of Ms. Fareio’s paintings; it was those kaleidoscopic paintings that first drew me in years ago. Holes to Heaven is a river scene at night, the canyon walls look like they could be carved from ice, and the stars burning in the firmament look unreal, but if you have ever spent a night down on the beaches of the Colorado River, looking up through the break in the canyon walls, you have seen such beauty.
The Journey shows an aerial river view with a canyon stretching far out to the horizon. Two dories are docked at a river beach in the foreground, miniscule in comparison to the canyon walls. “The Journey can be taken many ways,” Ms. Fareio describes. “The journey of taking a river trip itself, or a hike in the Grand Canyon, or using the river in the Grand Canyon as a metaphor for life: there are rapids and flash floods, rocks coming down; sometimes it’s calm and sometimes it’s really challenging; or it could be the journey of a molecule of water.”
“On the Road Home,” paintings by Ms. Fareio, will be featured for the month of December at West of the Moon Gallery, 14 N. San Francisco St. An opening reception will take place on December 4 during the First Friday ArtWalk. Ms. Fareio has cards of her paintings on display in Jerome, Grand Canyon Village, the Museum of Northern Arizona and at other locales in the Verde Valley. EricaFareio.com
| Clair Anna Rose is a maven of ravens.
art@thenoise.us
22 • DECEMBER 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • december 2015 • 17
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