Mural Tour!

On Monday, 7/11, Bruce took Elaine and I on a mural tour of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The first mural that we looked at was the Berlin Wall Mural, made in 1978.  It came as a response to a redevelopment project that closed off Nicollet by building a K-mart in the middle of its path.  This construction essentially segregated the black and white communities.  One of the provisions in the project stated that a mural could be painted on K-mart's back wall.  Frustrated artists depicted a city official closing the door on Nicollet, which is in the end replaced by a battleship.  This expresses their feelings that the redevelopment project only would lead to more violence. 


I really appreciated the simplification of form that we saw in the Berlin Wall Mural.  On such an enormous scale, detail is not as important, nor is it necessarily even desirable.  The mural was organized in a storyboard format, cutting back and forth in rectangular views of Nicollet and the battleship. 


The Mosaic of the Americas was the next stop on our list.  Having worked on the mural himself, Bruce had much to say about this project.  About seven artists worked on the project, four of which were from  Mexico  (Gustavo Lira, who I met a few posts ago, was one of them).  The Mexican artists created the design, and 250 to 300 community volunteers helped cut and place tiles over a four-week period.  People also signed up to bring food for the workers. 


At this second look, I saw even more images and symbolism than I had noticed before.  On the lower right hand corner, the horseman of the apocalypse chases chickens.  According to Bruce, Mexicans often refer to immigrants as "chickens".   This is making me think more about Gold'N'Plump in Cold Spring...

Next, we went to the Labor Mural, and met one of the artists, Keith.  Keith has had a lot of experience as an artist activist, and was mentored by the famous Eva Cockcroft.  This indoor mural used the river as a metaphor for the connections between people.  This was very interesting to me because I am also planning on making the river central to my design for Cold Spring's mural. 

My initial inspiration to use a river as symbol came from my chats with one of the priests at St. Boniface.  I asked him what diversity would look like if it were an image.  His response was a river...  Where he comes from in Venezuela, there are two rivers that run parallel.  The Caroni river is black, and the Orinoco river is the color of yellow earth.  The two rivers eventually merge, but the colors remain distinct for a long time before eventually blending together. 


Another mural that also focused on the river was painted by Joshua Sartitis on a long and short wall.  I really enjoyed its exaggerated perspective and have since tried some sketches in this spirit.

We also got to see several more murals done in collaboration with youth.  I would put all the photos on here if I could, but for some reason I'm having technical difficulties...

I had a blast on the mural tour and I want to thank my awesome professors for taking me on it!