Dave Loewenstein's Art Bulletin

Occupy poster

2012-02-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

"Occupy the Wish" spraypaint stencil

Guardians of the Arts

2011-12-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

"Guardians of the Arts" one of my very first (1993) community murals was painted over today in order to help repair the wall it was on. I have offered to restore it for the cost of materials - about $1,000. If you want the mural restored, please tell folks at Signs of Life bookstore and the Lawrence Cultural Arts Commission how you feel.

Many thanks, Dave

New Occupy Movement poster

2011-11-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

Occupy Together poster

2011-11-04T11:33:00.001-07:00

Please feel free to print, post, and share.

New Occupy Poster

2011-11-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Tip of the Iceberg"
Feel free to print and share.

New Poster for the 99%

2011-10-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

Feel free to copy, print, and post.

Joplin Mural on PBS

2011-09-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

click below to see a great piece about the new mural in Joplin, MO
"The Butterfly Effect - Dreams Take Flight"
New Joplin Mural Tells Story of the Storm

"Called to Walls" the documentary

2011-08-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Help support "Called to Walls" by pledging on Kickstarter!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/calledtowalls

Out of view of the high art world and the hip gallery scene comes this heartening story of unlikely partners in Middle American communities working together to reexamine their histories, celebrate what makes their towns unique, and imagine their futures in the form of monumental community murals. This film is part road movie, part inspirational small town drama, and part art documentary. Working in conjunction with Mid America Arts Alliance's "The Mural Project," this compelling story follows Kansas artist Dave Loewenstein, on a three-year journey around the heart of the US, helping to reignite a sense of civic pride and creative possibility in places often overlooked. "Called to Walls" is a thoughtful and uplifting film that leaves viewers not only admiring the serious work and good will of these artists, but also with an itch to go out and do it themselves.

Murals featured in the latest NEA Magazine

2011-08-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Click on the link below to check out a feature about some of my murals in the new National Endowment for the Arts magazine.

Part of Community Life:
The Murals of Dave Loewenstein

Waiting in the Wings, 2010 Salina, Kansas

Contagious Beauty + Local Flavor

2011-07-08T09:13:00.001-07:00

New Project at the Great Mural Wall of Topeka

Find out more at -
greatwalloftopeka.blogspot.com

"Pest Revenge" in Queens, New York

2011-07-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

Welling Court
Astoria, Queens

See more about this project at the Brooklyn Street Art blog here.

Welling Court Mural Project in NYC

2011-06-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled to be included in this special street art event in Queens, New York. Come check us out if you're in the area. We'll be painting Friday, June 24th and Saturday, June 25th. In addition, on Saturday there's a block party with all sorts of great food, drink, and music.

for more info check out - Ad Hoc Art's website here

Ad Hoc Art Mural Project
at Welling Court in Astoria, Queens, NYC

– An Art Event Celebrating the Streets, Solidarity, Community, and Culture –

WHAT: The community of Welling Court in Queens, New York first asked Ad Hoc Art to help them spruce up their neighborhood in 2009. Ad Hoc Art was honored to do so and rose to the occasion in May 2010 organizing a project fitting for the diverse, enthusiastic, and energetic inhabitants. Now, a year later, Ad Hoc has assembled another spectacular crew of legendary and groundbreaking artists spanning more than 50 years of activity for the 2^nd Annual Welling Court Mural Project. The project has received remarkable global acclaim since its launch and continues to garner support as more walls, artists, and enthusiasts augment that success.

This second round is not to be missed as we bring ever-more art and eyes to this Queens gem. To celebrate, the community’s annual block party coincides with the project’s opening, featuring cuisine and music from the ethnically diverse and multi-talented hosts. Whereas this tiny neighborhood is providing some major hospitality, it cannot provide for all the thousands of attendees, so please:

The project transforms several city blocks into a 24/7 street-level gallery, bringing art from around the world directly to the heart of this community. Renowned artists with deep roots in the street movement have created site-specific works for this project and many will showcase various creative sundries for your perusal. This new array of visual experiences provides fresh contexts for how people working, visiting, and living in this diverse cultural gem of Queens think about and interact with their environment.

Artists include: Alice Mizrachi, Ashley Jane Laird, Alison Buxton, Beau Stanton, Bunnie Reiss, Caleb Neelon, Chris Mendoza, Chris Stain, Celso, Cern, Cey Adams, Chor Boogie, Cicelia Ross-Gotta, CR, Cycle, Dan Witz, Darkclouds, Dave Loewenstein, Don Leicht, Ellis Gallagher, Ezra Li Eismont, Free5, Garrison Buxton, Greg Lamarche, Ise, Jesse Jones, JMR, Joe Iurato, John Ahearn, John Fekner, Jordan Seiler, Katie Yamasaki, Lady Pink, Leon Reid, Matt Siren, Michael De Feo, Michael Fumero, MIMEO, Mr. Kiji, Neko, Nuria, OverUnder, Pablo Power, R. Nicholas Kuszyk, ROA, Ron English, Royce Bannon, Sinned, Sofia Maldonado, TooFly, Tristan Eaton, Veng RWK, Zam, and more.

WHEN: Saturday, June 25^th, 2011 from noon until 9pm.

WHERE: 11-98 Welling Court {@ 30^th Ave & 12^th Street}, Astoria, Queens 11102

New show in L.A.

2011-05-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

I have a dream, I have a nightmare
Ad Hoc Art brings together 34 international artists to explore dreams, nightmares, superstitions, and existence.

Opening Friday, May 13th

New Puppy Gallery
2808 Elm Street
Los Angeles, CA

Artists include: Alison Buxton, Beau Stanton, Bill Fick, Broken Crow, Bunnie Reiss, Chor Boogie, Chris Stain, CRASH, Dabs & Myla, Daryll Peirce, Dave Loewenstein, Don Leicht, Ezra Li Eismont, Garrison Buxton, Hellbent, Joe Iurato, John Breiner, John Carr, John Fekner, Jordan Seiler, Know Hope, Lady Pink, Michael De Feo, Mikal Hameed, Paul Booth, Peat Wollaeger, Ray Cross, Rex Dingler, ROA, Robert Steel, Sean Starwars, TheDirtyFabulous, & Thundercut.

www.newpuppyla.com

Only in Lawrence - profile

2011-04-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

from the Lawrence Journal-World

By Emily Mulligan

April 29, 2011

Dave Loewenstein and the murals he paints have a great deal in common: They are colorful, tell fascinating stories and have far-reaching impact.

Loewenstein, 44, is an artist, muralist, printmaker, teacher, author, community activist, documentarian and social catalyst, who has lived in Lawrence doing all of these things since 1990. He is also a founding member and current chair of the Percolator, a non-profit that brings new art and cultural events to Lawrence and Douglas County.

He came to Lawrence to attend graduate school for his master’s degree of fine arts from Kansas University. During his studies, he realized that he wanted his art to serve a greater purpose.

“I wanted what I was doing somehow to reach audiences outside the established art audience, to people I meet every day,” Loewenstein says. “I also felt like there was a social purpose for visual art that wasn’t being used enough — to engage in important issues of the day.”

Loewenstein has created murals throughout Kansas and the Midwest. Locally, his murals can be found at Cordley School, the Lawrence Farmers’ Market and Quinton’s Bar & Deli, home to his first mural.

He travels about half of the year to communities to talk about the most important issues in their community and create murals to be shared with generations to come. While planning his murals, he enjoys the opportunity to meet people and expose them to the visual arts.

“One of the many discussions that needs to be re-framed in our culture is the one about art,” he says. “Artists have always had the incredible power to highlight when things are wrong and the power to influence. Murals involve re-engaging with the visual environment and creating something that is a reflection of people and places.”

Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, knows Loewenstein and his approach to art and culture.

“He doesn’t think of art as a rarefied commodity; he thinks of it as part of community life,” she says. “He is not a one-man form. He involves many collaborators, which is a good model for community art.”

Loewenstein has designed and printed posters for many anti-war protests, starting with the Gulf War in 1991-92, influenced by historical wartime posters.

“Printmaking is a way for me to respond to the issues of the day. There are not enough voices of dissent — I don’t care what side you’re on,” he says. “There are maybe more online and less face-to-face, and that concerns me.”

Loewenstein and other members and visitors to the Percolator studio space, which is just east of the Lawrence Arts Center, regularly have the chance to have those face-to-face discussions about issues and art. Besides showcasing artists’ work, Percolator members also generate their own artwork, invite artists to speak and host workshops.

Christina Hoxie, Percolator board member, says the open-endedness of the Percolator is what makes it special.

“Its prime mission is to stimulate the community to make arts and do cultural projects important to them,” Hoxie says. “It’s tapping into the imagination of the community and seeing what they want to do.”

She says that Loewenstein is the ideal facilitator for the Percolator.

“He is a great mentor, not just as an artist. The community is transformed by his artwork every day, and making sure everyone has a part to play is a big part of who he is,” Hoxie says. “Even his smaller works show what an insightful person that he is and carry his spirit of always encouraging others to participate.”

Reece Hardy says that Loewenstein’s energy and community involvement come through in his art.

“He has an unusual ability to bring economy to a complex set of ideas,” Reece Hardy says. “Sometimes that takes the vehicle of a poster, sometimes it takes the vehicle of a mural. He likes to communicate directly and strips any protective barrier between people and art.”

Loewenstein is creating art for a downtown show called “Them,” which will discuss NIMBYs — “not in my backyard” scenarios. He teaches a class about community art at Washburn University, he is co-producing his second documentary about his art, and he is waiting to hear if he will go abroad next fall as part of an art program with the State Department.

Loewenstein is happy he came to Lawrence.

“This is a place I care about and I feel some responsibility to,” he says. “I’m super-grateful to have all the work I do on all fronts.”

Watch a short video of Dave talking about making a living as an artist here.

THEM - a preview

2011-03-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

Come see my new show, THEM, now through April 23rd

Invisible Hand Gallery
12 - 5 Tuesday - Thursday
12 - 7 Friday & Saturday

801 1/2 Massachusetts (upstairs)
Lawrence, KS

Click here for a short review of the show.

And below a preview...

New Show at the Invisible Hand

2011-03-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

opening
friday, march 25th
THEM

An installation of cut-paper tableaus that follow Drones, Nimbys, and Frame-up Specialists as they try to rid their back yards, business districts, and border towns of Them.
at the Invisible Hand
upstairs at 801 1/2 Massachusetts
Lawrence, KS

John Brown supports the KAC

2011-03-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Rally art featured on Studio 360

2011-02-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

Art made by me and other Lawrence Percolators is featured on a new segment of the nationally syndicated NPR arts program Studio 360. Listen below to the interview with Kansas State Senator Roger Reitz who is trying to garner enough votes to block the Governor's proposal to abolish the Kansas Arts Commission.

www.studio360.org/2011/feb/18/whats-matter-kansas-time/

A letter in support of the Kansas Arts Commission

2011-02-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

Art advocates from across the state have done an excellent job warning us about the potential loss in tourism dollars and arts-related jobs that Kansas would suffer if the Governor’s proposal to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission were approved. I agree with their dire assessment and believe that these arguments alone should be enough to convince our legislators to put the breaks on this misguided proposal.

But there is another case to be made if we really want to understand why art is integral to our communities, state, and nation. We need to support art (at least at the current yearly rate of .29 cents per person) because art is the discipline engaged in exploring the language of stories - stories of where we have been, who we are, and how we want to be remembered. This work, this research and experimentation into those qualities that make us human and humane, is essential to the growth and maintenance of a healthy democratic society. And like science, art needs public support precisely because its benefits accrue slowly, cannot be easily quantified, and are absolutely necessary.

Theater, music, film, dance, poetry, painting. Artists young and old working in these media are at the forefront of shaping our shared identity as Kansans. Support for the Kansas Arts Commission, which gives all of us access to this creative world, is essential because, as Topeka born poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote in a poem from 1970, “ We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”

Best - Known Unknown Aritist in KS

2011-01-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

from Review - Mid America's Visual Arts Publication

Best - Known Unknown Artist in KS
By Tom King January 26, 2011

A talk with Kansas muralist Dave Loewenstein

Dave Loewenstein stands in front of his "Tower Cam Kiss" print. Image: photo Anne Tangeman

Travel across Kansas and you're likely to spot a Dave Loewenstein mural. He's made his mark in Garden City and Dodge City, in Great Bend and Hutchinson, in Newton, Salina, Topeka, Kansas City and in his hometown of Lawrence, host to a dozen Loewenstein murals — and his mark is much more than paint.

Loewenstein describes his mural process as "part street instillation, part performance piece, and part social intervention." Local participants — often in smaller, rural communities — are involved in every step of the process. He engages directly and openly with the townspeople, translating their thoughts into images, their actions into dance.

Loewenstein has completed 75 murals across the nation, and one in Northern Ireland. His mural-making schedule for 2011 is booked solid. Yet he finds time to produce countless editions of his often politically charged stencil prints and posters (included in four published anthologies of activist art in the past two years), and to serve on the board of the Lawrence Percolator, "a place where artists and audiences can interact comfortably," of which he is a founding member.

And there's more. This spring, Loewenstein takes his art off the street and into the halls of academia, teaching a class called "Roots and Practices: Community-Based Public Art" at Washburn University in Topeka. He is also an accomplished writer: Blank Canvas, his now-retired blog on Lawrence.com, took the Kansas Press Association's 1st Place Columnist award in 2007. He is the co-author, with Lawrence artist Lora Jost, of Kansas Murals: A Traveler's Guide, now in its second edition from University Press of Kansas.

Discussing topics for this interview, Loewenstein winces at the term "community art."
______

Tom King: What's wrong with saying 'community art?'

Dave Loewenstein: I don't like how it's characterized sometimes. It puts me in a box. People figure they know what it is: simple, pedestrian — not 'Art.' Anytime you collaborate with so-called non-artists and passers-by, many people in the 'Art' community belittle it: 'Oh, it's just kids painting murals, just paint slapped on a wall.'

TK: What is it, then?

DL: Murals are part of it, of course; murals are the focus. The art really matters. But for me, where the mural used to be the end goal, now the scope is much broader. The mural process is an opportunity to engage people to manifest something they couldn't do on their own. Murals are what get me in the door, because people understand that idea. But then we get going on other things that can happen, and suddenly you've got a roomful of disparate people having a conversation about making something. Then things really get interesting.

Dave Loewenstein, detail of "The Imagineers," in Newton, Kansas, completed in September 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

For example: the last mural we did, The Imagineers, was in Newton, Kansas, in the Salvation Army parking lot where kids would hang out and drink beer on weekends. We moved in, working day and night, and the kids got interested. We started showing movies on the wall at night, and pretty soon most of town came to visit.

Sara Dick, one of our design team members, stopped by. She was back from a Liz Lerman dance workshop in Washington and was eager to choreograph something in the Lerman mode. She took note of what was going on, all the people from all walks of life. She organized everyone, and, at the mural dedication ceremony, premiered a dance she choreographed based on the parking lot scene — the locals were the dancers.* But the great thing was, as soon as the dance was over, people were asking, 'When's the next one?'

Sara Dick (far right) leads citizens of Newton, Kansas, in a dance rehearsal in front of Dave Loewenstein's "The Imagineers." Image: courtesy of the artist

TK: They're hungry for it.

DL: You know they are. When you take creativity out of the 'Art' context, everyone's included. And because you engage people in the place where they live, the possibilities increase. You're not bound by the walls and strictures of a gallery or a scene, but you still want to do the most sophisticated work you can, given the situation and the resources. You don't want to dumb down the art; you want to keep the bar high. People respond best to a worthy challenge.

TK: "The Mural Project: Dave Loewenstein" is featured on the front page of the Mid-America Arts Alliance's website. What's the story?

DL: First of all, working with people who can make things happen and understand what you're doing is amazing. Realistic budgets and schedules, and art students as helpers! And documentation! Film maker Nick Ward documented the two murals we did this year in Kansas and Oklahoma. The documentary aspect was the most challenging art I've ever done, working on so many levels and with so many variables. Everything was up for grabs! How did it happen? A call from Mary McCabe a couple of years ago.
______

Mary Kennedy McCabe is the executive director for Mid-America Arts Alliance, founded in 1972 and based in Kansas City, Missouri. Mid-America Arts Alliance — in partnership with the state art agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas — supports and administers a wide range of performances, exhibitions and educational programs connecting with over one million Midwesterners annually.

"I learned about Dave's work in 2008 — the Great Wall of Topeka mural," says McCabe. "I invited him to speak about his work to the (M-AAA) staff, and after the presentation, we floated the idea of a mural project. This year, we got the funding to do a pilot program in Tonkawa, Oklahoma, and Newton, Kansas."

Dave Loewenstein, "Listening Back, Dreaming Forward," in Tonkawa, Oklahoma, completed in May 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

The pilot mural project — a partnership with the Kansas Arts Commission and the Oklahoma Arts Council — had stringent qualifications. Towns had to apply for the murals, and each of the finalist communities was visited by a selection committee, which included Loewenstein, before the murals were awarded.

"It was a detailed set-up process. We wanted to make sure that each community knew that Dave's mural was not going to be your standard chamber-of-commerce production," McCabe says. "We had to be confident that that the community was ready, willing, and able to fully participate in the project."

McCabe prizes the positive results of Loewenstein's work. "At M-AAA, we hold a core value that cultural expression is intrinsic to human beings. Our mission is to help people and communities express themselves," she says. "With Dave, the real work of art is the process that occurs. To me, the mural is an artifact of that process."

The M-AAA's collaboration with Loewenstein is a step-by-step affair, contingent primarily on funding. A project in Missouri is in the works for 2011.
_____

Dave Loewenstein, "Droned," spray paint stencil, 26" x 40". Image: courtesy of the artist

TK: Your politics and activism imbue almost everything you make.

DL: I'm more of an activist in my printmaking and stencils, but it gets into the murals too. A lot of artists doing public work steer clear of the politics, but I'm responding to the conversations I have with the locals. If a political issue rises to the surface, let's put it in the mural. We're not going to pussy-foot around this stuff.

I started using stencils in 1991 at KU. Activism was in the air, people protesting everywhere. Stencils were an immediate, efficient, and cheap method of communication, and I could put an image or a message anywhere — on the street, buildings, cars, placards, or on a nice sheet of paper. I went crazy with stencils on the KU campus. It opened a whole new thing for me. I liked the anonymity, the different audience.

Activism, for me, is a natural response to a certain kind of situation. Maybe I'm just working things out for myself. I deal with my concerns by making something, and sometimes I make the politics obvious. I have lots of ideas and they need to be realized in different ways. A good artist finds the right outlet.

TK: Are you a Banksy fan?

DL: Some of it. I'm not so sure he's one guy anymore. My dream would be that he's 50 people, not necessarily aware of each other. That's my kind of anarchism.

Dave Loewenstein, detail of "Nickels and Dimes," 22" x 210". Image: courtesy of the artist

TK: Works like Nickels and Dimes are part of an ongoing series of large-scale drawings which you describe as 'Wordless Short Stories.' They look like cartoon strips without speech balloons.

DL: They started with looking out the window of a bar or coffee shop, watching the street characters. Like overhearing, but overseeing. I thought if I eliminated words and let viewers fill in the narrative, they'd have an experience somewhat similar to my overseeing. Like storyboards. In fact, they opened a whole new thing for me — that was the first time I thought about working with film makers. Ultimately, they are a selfish pleasure: not about collaboration, not about politics, just daydreaming scenarios. They're hard work, but a joy to make.

TK: Your role in the mural process is, in large part, that of teacher. Now that role is official: this spring, you're leading a class at Washburn University in Topeka.

DL: That's another connection from the Great Wall in Topeka. One of the mural assistants was a student at Washburn and put me in touch with Glenda Taylor, the chair of the art department. I proposed a class, "Roots and Practices," and she liked it. It runs January through May 2011, about 18 students. There's a significant learning curve, so half of the class will be reading, lectures, and guest speakers. For the second half, we'll pick a few sites around town and the students will develop specific public art proposals. For the first year, it's proposals only — we'll exhibit those at the end of the semester. I'll teach the class my way: we'll meet off-site, make food, and do our work in non-traditional settings.

Dave Loewenstein at work in his 411 Studio in Lawrence, Kansas. Image: photo Anne Tangeman

TK: Your inclusive, community-based mural process spills over into many aspects of your life. You served on the Lawrence Cultural Arts Commission, you're involved with neighborhood associations and community gardens, and in 2008, you were a founder of the Lawrence Percolator, a collaborative art space based in a storefront in a downtown alleyway.

DL: The Percolator is a dream come true. We're not a gallery — we don't want to book fancy art, cater to hipsters, and go after money. It's not just another place to hang your stuff. Generating new ideas is what we're about, not exalting personalities. The Percolator is a place where artists collaborate to expand on what they do. Percolate it! Lawrence deserves a credible alternative art space. We want to surprise people at every turn — feasts, parades, art shows … everything!

Support the Kansas Arts Commission

2011-01-23T20:05:00.000-08:00

In his budget proposal for the state, Governor Sam Brownback has threatened to abolish the Kansas Arts Commission. If his budget is adopted, Kansas would become the only state in the United States that does not support the arts. (read the Topeka Capital-Journal article here)
This is unacceptable.
Please, if you care about the Arts, contact your state senator and the governor to express your support for the Kansas Arts Commission.

MAAA Mural Project Video

2010-12-09T10:43:00.000-08:00

Tonkawa - Newton Mural Project
by Amber Hansen and Nicholas Ward

This short video brings together footage and interviews from the Tonkawa, OK and Newton, KS mural projects during the summer of 2010. A longer format documentary about these and future projects is in the works.

Studio Open House

2010-11-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a few years since I've done a proper show and tell, so I'm having a...
Studio Open House
Saturday & Sunday
December 4th & 5th
1 - 6 pm
Come see new stencils, graphic novelettes, mural studies and other unclassifiable artifacts. And, if you like, bring something to get stencilized (shirts, books, cars, computers, pets, etc).

My studio is located just a couple blocks east of downtown at -
411 East 9th Street
Lawrence, Kansas

Celebrate People's History

2010-11-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

Check out this great new book which I am honored to be included in. "Celebrate People's History" is edited by artist and activist Josh MacPhee and is published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

"110 posters by over eighty artists pay tribute to revolution, racial justice, women’s rights, queer liberation, labor struggles, and creative activism and organizing. Celebrate People’s History!presents these essential moments—acts of resistance and great events in an often hidden history of human and civil rights struggles—as a visual tour through decades and across continents, from the perspective of some of the most interesting and socially engaged artists working today.” — Josh MacPhee

Here is the poster I made for the book. It's a spraypaint stencil titled "The Amazon Army." The text that's at the bottom of the poster is reproduced below.

On December 11, 1921, propelled by the need to feed their children and outraged at Kansas’s new anti-labor legislation, a crowd of more than 500 women gathered in Franklin, Kansas and resolved to march in solidarity with miners striking at union District 14 coal mines. The strike was called in response to the new Industrial Court Law signed by Kansas Governor Allen, which forced unions into arbitration and outlawed strikes. On December 12th, the women began their march on the mines, armed only with the American flag, which they carried to make clear that the values it symbolized were synonymous to those of their cause.

By December 15^th, the march had swelled to more than 4,000 stretching over a mile long. With the mines at a stand still, word spread that the militia was en route, and the women, dubbed the “Amazon Army” by the New York Times, voluntarily chose to end their march in the hopes of preventing bloodshed. Victory for the marchers and their striking coal miners came the following year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the compulsory arbitration clause of the Industrial Court Law was unconstitutional. Workers still had the right to strike.

Community-Based Public Art class coming soon!

2010-10-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

Offered for the first time at Washburn University

Instructor - Dave Loewenstein

Community-Based Public Art: Roots and Practice* January 2011

*listed as Murals and Public Art in Washburn course catalog

Beginning with a series of lectures, visiting speakers, and field trips, this unique new course will introduce art students to the roots and current practice of collaborative community-based public art: projects that bring local people together in partnership with professional artists, to engage in an open process that culminates in the creation of site specific artworks reflecting their interests and their workmanship. Following the classroom work, students will move to the studio where each will develop their own design for a community mural at a specific site in the Topeka area. This process will include site visits, meetings with stakeholders, and consideration of logistics in the execution of the work. The completed designs will be shown at the end of the semester in an exhibition open to the public.

“The highest, most logical, purest and most powerful type of painting is mural painting. It is also the most disinterested, as it cannot be converted into an object of personal gain nor can it be concealed for the benefit of a few privileged people. It is for the people. It is for everybody.”

- Jose Clemente Orozco, Mexican Muralist

Newton - "The Imagineers"

2010-09-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Matt, Erika, Nick, and all the folks in Newton and North Newton for their support in seeing "The Imagineers" come to life. Below are images of the completed mural. Enjoy.

photo by Jim Wimmer

Newton - mural celebration photos

2010-09-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

It was a fabulous day. The weather, beautiful. The turnout, over 200. And the spirit, including a sweet dance performance accompanied by live music, just heartwarming. Many people spoke about the project including Barb Burns, Rachel Epp Buller, Erika Nelson, Joe Loganbill, and Bethel College President Perry White. You can read some of their comments in the Newton Kansan article published today.

Here are some of my comments from the program handed out at the celebration:

Approaching the mural, one sees a group of people around a table engaged in the process of building, playing, restoring, and imagining. These figures are symbolic of the Newton/ North Newton community. They are not based on particular individuals so much as they are composites of the many and varied peoples of the area. This group. This family. This community. They have chosen to address the important questions of their town's identity, history, and future, and they are actively working to better understand who they are and what they wish to become. So, this mural is not so much a literal transcribing of history or an enumeration of the individuals and architecture already known, as it is an evocation of an idea or a visual poem that attempts to capture the spirit of an energized and optimistic community choosing to become a better place for all of its citizens.

Dance performance by the Newton Dance Project choreographed by Sara Dick.

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make this such a great project. Now, all I've got to do is varnish that darn thing in the morning and we can call it good.

Newton Mural Celebration

2010-09-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

Please Join Us
to Celebrate the Completion of

The Imagineers

Sunday, September 19th
4 pm

3rd & Main
(just south of the train depot)
Newton, Kansas

Newton - Painting

2010-09-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

Transferring the design is really not as hard as it looks, well at least not since digital projectors have been around. To go from 30 x 80 inches to 30 x 80 feet, we took a photo of our line drawing, tinkered with it (well Matt and Erika tinkered with it) a bit in photoshop, and then projected it onto the wall to the delight of insects and makers of giant shadows.

It's the morning after the free wheeling transfer party when things appear a little shakier. Looking at what we had copied, the lines were way less precise than we thought the night before. In some places it was hard to tell a nose from a thumb or a suitcase handle from a bridge... But, that's normal. Like humming a few bars of a new song, without lyrics or instruments, it can be hard to imagine the completed painting when all that's there are the rough outlines of the design.

Blocking in big areas of color helps to clarify the basic elements of the design quickly. It also establishes the mural's value structure and color harmony from which the rest of the painting will be developed. And blocking in these big shapes is relatively easy so it's a great time to have what we call "community paint days." Newton, it seems, was more than ready to get their brushes to the wall, because on our first community paint day over eighty people showed up to get their licks in. And that was followed the next day by over a hundred. To date, over two hundred and fifty people have helped paint on Newton's new mural.

While passersby and volunteers work below, we painted from scissor lifts above. In these early stages of painting, I spend my time mixing and mixing and mixing paint. Mixing the right amount (so you don't have to re-mix and re-mix) of the right color at the right value takes practice, and it's easy to mis-mix and end up with a gallon of unusable muck.
So, like a bartender, I stand behind the paint table handing out concoctions such as burnt sienna cooled with a medium violet tint or chromium green dirtied with cadmium orange. And in a transformation that seems to happen overnight, the white of the wall gives way to color.

After the mural has been completely filled in with one layer of color, it's time to project the details of the design on top of the existing painting. More fun can be had with shadows, since now they have images to interact with as Matt demonstrates below.

From here on out, the areas to paint are smaller, the decisions about color and value tougher to make, and the chances of making things look really weird much much greater. " Why does that girl have an eye in her nose?", I heard once. But, this is also the stage when the painting starts to come into its own and I usually breathe a sigh of relief knowing it's probably going to look pretty cool.

Newton - Behind the Scenes

2010-09-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

As the painting process gets into full swing and our days come and go with us perched like amateur circus performers atop wavering scissor lifts, we've taken to spending the precious few hours we have off with some of Newton's second tier cultural offerings, among them: The (seldom heard) Legend of Newton's Cusped Cutlery.

To begin, let's be very clear: The Nork* (actually spelled Knork) is not a spork.

The story goes (if you believe in stories) that some thirty or forty or fifty years ago two young friends growing up in Newton, who also happened to be novice inventors, stumbled onto the idea (while attempting to eat artisan pizza) of marrying the fork's capacity for impaling with the knife's obsession with cutting. After years or months or weeks of r & d, the friends each came up with an elegant design solution - a single utensil that appeared at first glance to be only a fork, but when turned revealed a tapered edge suitable for cutting. Their inventions were identical in every way except in name, where one called his the Fife, the other called his new tool the Nork.

Nork
History has buried the heartbreaking story of what followed, for these two young men had dismissed the age old adage that friends, if they want to remain so, should never go into business together. Looking through an old newspaper, we discovered the shocking story. The headline from way back then screams at the reader - "INVENTOR STABBED BY NORK! " What unpoetic justice. The newspaper in its arrogance or ineptitude had misnamed the weapon. The inventor was stabbed, but not by a Nork. It was instead the one and only existing prototype of the Fife, its inventor so distraught over losing the name game (and a potential fortune from wedding registries and school lunchrooms) that he lashed out against his childhood friend.

Fife
A friendship broken beyond repair, the Fife's inventor (after serving a reduced jail term - he claimed the stabbing an accident while playing an old parlor game) disappeared, while the Nork continues to grow its market share, pushing aside knives and forks at many Newton dinner tables. A compelling story for sure, but obviously not suitable for a community mural, and so it will most likely fade away into the shadowy realm of forklore and myth where it clearly belongs.

*names have been changed to protect innocent tableware

"Mennonite Settler" newspaper article

2010-09-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

Since the Mennonite Settler sculpture is included in our mural design, I thought it would be helpful to include this article, which, coincidentally, was published just a couple days after I had written about it in the entry titled 'Monumental Research.'

(from the NewtonKansan)
August 31, 2010

Then and Now: Newton’s statue in the park is stimulating art

By Keith Sprunger

The Mennonite Settler Statue in Athletic Park came to Newton in 1942 as a part of an early “Government Stimulus Program.” Last spring, when Congress was debating the current economic stimulus program, a Lawrence newspaper ran an article and photo about the New Deal stimulus programs of the 1930s and 1940s. It pointed to our Athletic Park statue as an example of government stimulus art from previous times. This gave Newton a bit of fame in art circles for a day or two. Newton has stimulating art.

Economic stimulus programs usually aim at big enterprises, such as auto plants and banks.
But, as Roosevelt’s New Deal saw it, art also needed to be stimulated. Artists also deserved to have work. The Work Projects Administration, or WPA, through the New Deal years employed millions of workers on various public projects. Art projects were included. In 1940, the Junior Chamber of Commerce was looking for a project to boost Newton. WPA funds were available. The Newtonians decided a Wheat Memorial statue in the park would be nice. It would honor the Newton area as a center of wheat production.

The memorial would honor wheat in three ways. It was to honor Bernhard Warkentin as the importer of wheat from Russia, the Santa Fe Railroad for transporting the wheat and the Mennonite farmers who grew the wheat. The WPA would pay the salary of the sculptor, but the cost of limestone and other materials would have to be paid for locally. No large gifts materialized, so the Junior Chamber members had to go out looking for money dollar by dollar and bushel by bushel of wheat. Two local beauty queens, Betty Dester and Hazel Phillips, called the Wheathearts of America, helped considerably with fund raising. They went around to farms by truck at harvest time asking for a few scoops or bushel of wheat from the fields to help with the project. The community rallied. The money came in.

The statue was not completed until 1942. The sculptor was Max Nixon, a native of Haverhill in Butler County and unemployed at the time. The WPA approved him. He produced a stylized, limestone Mennonite wheat farmer mounted on a reddish cement shaft, and these were placed on a circular mosaic. The entire monument stands 17 feet tall. Max Nixon, on his own initiative, modified the emphasis of the monument. He featured the hard-working wheat farmer, not the Santa Fe or Warkentin, the wealthy miller. I never met Max Nixon, who later taught at the University of Oregon, but I talked with him by telephone several times. I asked him about shifting the emphasis to the Mennonite farmer, rather than the other suggested themes. He said he grew up on a farm and knew the value and ardor of hard farm work. “I wanted to give the farmers the idea that I really appreciated them,” he said. “I wanted to honor the laboring people rather than corporate wealth.” Nixon died in 2000.

The statue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.In 2000, it underwent a major restoration, necessitated because of damage from weather and vandalism. When the statue was unveiled at the dedication on Sept. 10, 1942, there was a gasp from the crowd. The social realism style was not what was expected. Over time, it has gained acceptance and real affection. It’s a great piece of stimulus art. Our current mural project on Main Street is giving Newton another project of stimulus art. Thank you.

Keith Sprunger is a member of the Historic Preservation Commission.

Newton - Design

2010-08-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Crossroads, cross currents, immigration, language translation - German - Spanish - English, Mennonite history, Hispanic heritage, the railroad, the Harvey Restaurant, agriculture and especially Red Turkey Wheat, monuments, Bethel College, Newton / North Newton tensions, Sand Creek, Native American settlement, the Doppler effect, military service, pacifism, farmers market, youth disenfranchisement and youth voices, the spread of Wichita, the mural process especially our design team meetings, Combs Organ Specialists. These are some of the topics on our narrowed down list of subjects for the mural design. Enough for at least five murals, a PHD dissertation and a reality tv show, but not a clear narrative or visual idea that could contain them all.

To help capture, in our design, this wide range of seemingly unrelated material , we began searching for common metaphors that would at once be visually compelling and imbued with useful meanings. So, there we were around the table scratching our heads and scribbling on pages. And there we were looking sort of like a group of quilters stitching individual designs into a whole, or model railroad enthusiasts imagining in miniature their ideal town, or even kids playing a board game about the machinations of city life complete with tiny symbolic figurines and buildings. And finally, there we were upstairs at the Carriage Factory Gallery discussing, disagreeing, dreaming, listening, and compromising because we wanted to to make the best mural possible. Aha.

Our design would be centered around a table with people engaged in the process of imagining, remembering, and creating their community. We included references to quilters, model railroads, and board games, while the space behind the seated figures was occupied by their overlapping hopes, half-baked notions, and embellished memories.

All of this rendered with symbols specific to Newton, North Newton, and our design process. The color study, made as a collage with cut paper, emphasized the difference between the more literal realm of the figures working around the table with that of the dream space behind them. Add an architectural border with textile designs and voila we had a pretty rockin' mural design. Whew.

Newton - Monumental Research

2010-08-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

For the course of the mural project, Erika, Matt and I are staying at a b&b tucked away on a little gravel road in North Newton. Part of an old farmstead, the house is attached to a grain silo that is now used as a super cool living space by the home's owner and our host Vada Snider. It's a beautiful spot surrounded with lush, well tended gardens, decorated on the inside with many of Vada's charming black and white photographs, and is a welcome retreat from our days spent on scissor lifts in the middle of the Dollar General parking lot.

Erika and Matt battle in the wall priming competition

Now that we're hot on the trail of a mural design, we've been following leads from passersby, professors, and Drubers Donuts patrons to name a few. The suggestions (I'll talk about local cuisine in an upcoming post) have led us to the Harvey County Historical Museum, Bethel College, the Kauffman Museum, the public library, the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Goessel, and the hike / bike trail along Sand Creek where I swear I saw (after Erika pointed it out) the world's largest frog.

Matt and Dave at the Harvey County Historical Museum

We even made a special trip to see, and learn from, the remarkable fresco by Jean Charlot (one of the 20th century's most distinguished muralists and a peer of Diego Rivera) in the Abbey Church at Benedictine College in Atchison.

Erika admiring Jean Charlot's fresco

And we have been searching for signs of how Newton characterizes itself. There is always the Chamber of Commerce and tourist information office to get the town motto and accompanying glossy brochures. This old Newton postcard shows the Interurban crossing the Main Street bridge over Sand Creek.

Since we are in the process of creating a giant public artwork, we also explored how Newton celebrates and remembers as seen in the public monuments it has chosen to build. But using monuments to gauge a community's character has a fundamental problem - their cost limits who can afford to build them. And therefore it's no surprise that those of lesser means are often underrepresented or not represented at all in public art, memorials, named civic institutions and the like. With this understanding we went hunting for Newton’s mega symbolic signifiers.

Cumulus but non-threatening clouds amidst a blue sky are everywhere in Newton. Created or inspired by the artist Phil Epp, all of Newton's public signage is decorated with his characteristic skyscapes. So are the newest town water tower and a couple of impressive tile mosaic murals.

Water tower cloudscape inspired by Phil Epp

Adjacent to the public library there are the requisite cannon and steam engine locomotive. Downtown there are a few murals, the most striking, painted soon after 9-11, is of a saluting soldier in fatigues in front of a building size American flag. Another beautiful mural by Ray and Patrice Olais, that once adorned a local softball field, remembers Hispanic immigrant railroad workers and the softball league they started when told they could not play in the city (white) league.

And then there is the curious statue in Athletic Park. I had a feeling it was something special when we first came upon it. A fifteen foot tall figure carved out of stone stands solemnly atop a salmon colored concrete base.

Surrounding the base, in ceramic mosaic, is a series of four panels that illustrate Kansas Mennonite's emigration from Russia. "The Mennonite Settler" as it is known was created by the artist Max Nixon in 1942 to celebrate Mennonite farmers who brought the famed Turkey Red Wheat to Kansas in the 1870's.

The project was funded in part by the WPA with help from Newton's Junior Chamber and, get this, farmers near and far who sold wheat at market and then donated the proceeds to the creation of the sculpture. A monument to wheat built, in part, by wheat grown in nearby fields. Wow, I can already see how this story alone would make a great mural. Maybe someday...

Newton - Research I

2010-08-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

How do you decide what to include in the mural?

This is one of the most common questions (and one of the toughest to answer) I get when beginning a new project. The flip-side question, how do you decide what to leave out? is easier to answer because, put bluntly, the answer is that most things are left out.

At one of our first community meetings, with hundreds of possible ideas on the table and no clear way to make them all fit together, I reminded participants that this was only one mural. If we wanted to create a visually compelling and meaningful artwork and not just a simple enumeration of things, the bulk of historical facts and faces, dates and places would need to be left on the cutting-room floor. Collaboration implies compromise.

Working to evoke the history, culture, and people of a place with any sort of objective truth in a public art work is a daunting task. As you begin to do research, it becomes clear that perceptions of history, culture, and development are rarely static or monolithic. Every place and every community of people has many overlapping notions about their history and community, many of which are in flux as economic, political, and demographic circumstances change.

Our design team meetings have reflected this complicated understanding of the past, as if history were constructed of hundreds of photos of the same scene from hundreds of individual points of view. Like a cubist painting by Picasso where fruits, faces, chairs and tables are depicted simultaneously from straight-on, profile, above and below in the same image, or a popular song that is interpreted first by an opera singer, next by a rock -n- roller, and finally by a bluegrass troubadour, meanings change depending on the singer, painter, or teller of a story.

Listening to such a wide range of points of view about essentially the same set of facts, we began to realize that the overlapping of history and complex multifaceted understanding of Newton’s identity, discussed in our community meetings, corresponded to the dynamic nature of a place at a nexus or crossroads. And because Newton is and always has been a place of crossroads, cross-currents, and cross-pollination, we felt like we had found a potential theme for the mural.

Newton's identity is grounded in its location as a geographic, economic, and cultural intersection. Early in its history, during the cattle drives of the 19th century, Newton was where the Chisholm Trail and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railway crossed. Later it became the intersection of two of the most important auto routes in North America: the Meridian Highway (U.S. Route 81) which runs south from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada through Newton to Mexico City, Mexico and on into Central America; and U.S. Route 50, better known as Main Street USA, which begins in Washington, D.C. goes right through Newton and ends in Sacramento, California. And throughout its history, Newton has been a locus of cultural and ethnic integration welcoming immigrants from around the world, especially Mennonites from Russia and Hispanics mainly from Mexico.

Our challenge has been to find a way to elaborate on the raw information of these crossings, framing them within visual metaphors that can hopefully get at the spirit or essence of the Newton /North Newton community.

Newton, Kansas

2010-07-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

A hundred miles north, a month later, ten degrees hotter and I'm here in Newton, Kansas beginning the sister project to the Tonkawa mural completed earlier this summer.

Newton was chosen as the Kansas site for the Mid-America Arts Alliance Mural Project in large part because two groups, one from Newton and the other from Bethel College in North Newton, made proposals independent of each other that emphasized different but overlapping aspects of their larger community. When the two groups discovered that they had both made proposals, they got together to share their ideas and create a new proposal that combined their efforts, thus beginning the very kind of collaboration that the MAAA Mural Project was intended to encourage.

Here in Newton, I'm joined by two esteemed assistants: Matt Farley, from Lawrence, a public artist who once tried out for the Boston Red Sox and who's installation "Frozen Assets" was recently chosen as one of the forty best public artworks in the U.S. and Canada by the non-profit, Americans for the Arts; and Erika Nelson, from Lucas, a multifaceted art maker and catsup expert who is best known for her traveling side show extravaganza " The World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things".

And, thanks to the generosity of building owner Mike Combs, the Newton mural will be painted in a prime location - the north facing wall of Combs Organ Specialists.
The wall located along Main Street and adjacent to the Salvation Army Thrift Store is also the backdrop to Newton's twice-a-week farmers market, and is clearly visible from the Newton train depot where Amtrak's Southwest Chief makes east and westbound stops. We couldn't have asked for a better setting for our project.

Community Mural in the Works

2010-07-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

from the Newton Kansan
July 22, 2010
Community Mural in the Works

Dave Loewenstein, a nationally recognized mural artist, talks to a group of more than 40 community members Monday night at the Carriage Factory Gallery in Newton regarding the community mural project. He will be in Newton for two months, working on aspects of the mural, from community meetings to design planning. The community mural will be on the north-facing wall of the Combs Organ Building south of the railroad crossing on Main Street. In early August, the community is invited to paint or watch the mural come to life.

Among those attending a Monday night event at the Carriage Factory Gallery in Newton who listened to Loewenstein are from left, Danika Bielek, Sara Dick and Rachel Epp Buller, professor of art at Bethel College. Those interested in the design committee for the community mural project met Wednesday night.

Audience members, from left, Pat Washburn, Emily Piper and Sam Piper, listen during the community mural meeting Monday night. Newton/North Newton was awarded the only mural grant project in Kansas. The Kansas Community Mural Project is funded by a grant from Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recovery Act.

Salina - Mural Celebration

2010-06-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Join us to celebrate the completion of

Waiting in the Wings
Wednesday, June 23rd
5:15 pm

Campbell Plaza (125 Santa Fe)
Salina, Kansas

Salina - Mural on the front page

2010-06-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

Debbie Wagner, of Bennington, paints Tuesday morning on a portion of the 55 foot wide mural at Campbell Plaza. (photo by Tom Dorsey / Salina Journal)

from the Salina Journal Wednesday, June 16th
Mural's Message
Artist: Painting in downtown Salina focuses on 'unique arts community'
By Tim Unruh
Until the painting became more intricate, anyone caught gawking or talking too much about Dave Loewenstein's mural was encouraged to grab a brush and join in the fun. A number of people, mostly children, have accepted the Lawrence artist's invitation to be a part of "Waiting in the Wings," a mural overlooking the Campbell Plaza outdoor stage, 125 S. Santa Fe, in downtown Salina.

"Little kids will walk by and he lets them paint, too," said Carolyn Klenda, a waitress at Coop's Pizzeria, 123 S. Santa Fe. Painting began June 8. While they wait for their orders, customers at the adjacent restaurant "stare out the windows and watch him," she said. Loewenstein is splashing the plaza with lots of bright colors and a message as well. "It's pretty cool. He's put a lot of time into it," Klenda said.

Project an extension of Festival

Loewenstein's Artist in Residence project, which involved months of research, is an extension of the Smoky Hill River Festival, said Connie Bonfy-Stewart, director of the Salina Arts and Humanities Commission. Mixed into the 13-by-55-foot mural that Loewenstein is creating with Bennington artist Debbie Wagner are reproductions of local art; children on chairs like those above the entry of the former Roosevelt-Lincoln Middle School, and ornate shapes like the artist found on the United Building off West Iron Avenue. "I'm a director, or a conductor, of many ideas," Loewenstein said as he stood high on a ladder painting a black border.

Dave Loewenstein, of Lawrence, paints backgound Tuesday morning on a 13 foot tall mural at Campbell Plaza. Loewenstein is the lead artist on the project. (photo by Tom Dorsey / Salina Journal)

A lot of art in Salina

Local people posed for some of the mural figures, which include a violinist and a dancer. "If you look real close, you'll see a figure of a curly-haired woman that looks a lot like (Sharon Benson)," Bonfy-Stewart said. Benson is the coordinator of arts education for Salina Arts and Humanities. "The focus is Salina's unique arts community," said Loewenstein, 43.

What makes it unique is a multifaceted approach, he said, including the annual river festival that reaches a broad audience, the nationally known Salina Art Center and the Arts and Humanities Commission, which promotes arts in education. And it's all in a relatively small town. "(Salina) has more civic institutions and public celebrations than maybe some (other towns)," Loewenstein said. There is a willingness to promote artistic endeavors in Salina, with plenty of artists -- including musicians and poets -- living here.

Being paid $6,000

Using National Endowment for the Arts and Kansas Touring Artist grants, Salina Arts and Humanities is paying Loewenstein $6,000 for the mural, which includes his supplies and living expenses while in residency. He's staying in a loft apartment above Santa Fe Avenue. "The design and the title are metaphors for the education and development of individual artists, and Salina's conscious process of building and shaping the cultural community over many years into what it is today," Loewenstein wrote in his blog. Loewenstein and Wagner expect to wrap up the mural in a week. A picture of how the mural will look is on the blog.

Gets a lot of use

Campbell Plaza is a "pocket park" that was created during the "Streetscape" upgrades in the 1980s, said Phyll Klima, executive director of Salina Downtown Inc., and is used for a number of activities throughout the year. Arts and Humanities stages concerts at the plaza in the fall, she said, and it's heavily booked during the holiday season. Coop's Pizzeria occasionally uses it during the restaurant's "Open Mic Nights," Klenda said. "We have a lot of different organizations and bands that use it for performances," Klima said. There is no charge to book Campbell Plaza. To make reservations, call Salina Downtown, 825-0535, a minimum of two weeks in advance.

Salina - Community Painting

2010-06-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

Back in February I was standing here in front of the Campbell Plaza stage trying to imagine summer, when the weather would be hot and sticky and people would be passing by curiously looking over their shoulders at a giant painting taking shape.

Time leaps. It's mid-June. The weather is alternately a sauna or a torrent of rain and thunder (the latter at the moment is giving me a chance to write this), and people have been asking a lot of questions.
"What is it going to be?"
"How long will it last?"
"Do you get paid to do that?"
"It's too bad about the brick. Is there any way to sand blast it (meaning the mural) off?"
"Will you be done by the end of the Festival (two days) ?"
"Are you an artist?"

As one of my mural heroes Jean Charlot used to do, I only let people hang out as armchair critics for a few minutes before I say, "Here, take a brush and paint this." Sometimes it takes a little encouraging, as people aren't used to being asked to jump right into working on a big public production, but I try to match each person's abilities with the right task so they're comfortable and challenged just enough to stay engaged.

So when someone comes by to take pictures or get an interview, it's always a trade - sure I'll go on camera if you paint this shape blue - as happened with Ashleigh (on the right) who stopped by to film a little piece about the mural for Salina Downtown Inc.

Others, especially kids, don't need the prodding. They're more than ready to paint anything anywhere. And the idea that they're going to paint on a wall outside is intoxicating. I agree.

Salina, Kansas

2010-06-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

After a two-day break to do laundry, pay bills, and wave at a few friends, I'm on to the next mural project - this one in Salina, Kansas. Salina is a captivating town known nationally for its Art Center, annual Smokey Hill River Festival (which the mural project is an offshoot of), and proximity to the Land Institute. It's a comfortable place and a town that reminds me of Lawrence, especially as I peer out of the window of the loft apartment I'm staying in on Santa Fe Street.

The Salina project is being organized by the Salina Arts and Humanities Commission. It's a smaller scale endeavor than the MAAA Tonkawa / Newton project. And although I'll be here only about two weeks, working with my assistant Debbie Wagner and community volunteers who need a breather from the River Festival, I'm really excited about the design and location of the mural.

The research and design process for Salina had to take place this past winter since I knew I was going to be in Tonkawa leading up to my residency here. During the winter, I visited three times where I met with local arts leaders, gave a presentation at the Salina Arts Center, and collected research materials. Folks at Arts and Humanities and I agreed to focus the mural design on an evocation of Salina's unique cultural scene - how this small mid-western town has developed such a rich arts environment.

The final design (below) I'm calling "Waiting in the Wings." The design and the title are metaphors for the education and development of individual artists, and Salina's conscious process of building and shaping the cultural community over many years into what it is today.

Using a theater metaphor was particularly appropriate here since the mural will be painted on the wall behind the outdoor stage at Campbell Plaza on Santa Fe Street.
Here is how I described the design when it was presented earlier this year:

Created for the wall behind the outdoor stage at Campbell Plaza, this design was developed around the ideas of mentorship and creative exploration. The composition is divided into a brightly lit and colorful 'center stage' and shadowed more monochromatic areas 'off stage - waiting in the wings.' Framing the mural on the left and right ( black rectangles now) will be representations of theater curtains. The young boy on the right and girl on the left seated in chairs are adapted from the relief above the the entryway to Lincoln School.

They are mentored/inspired/ guided by teachers who pass along tools (to be added in the final mural) to help them along as they develop their art. Accompanying these figures 'waiting in the wings' are other figures walking along high wires of artistic exploration. At the edge of the light and shadowed areas of the design, there appear new much larger representations the boy and girl (suggested specifically by Sawan Patidar) as they cross over onto the lit 'stage' with tools of self expression. (As you recall, most of these figures are based on Salina folk who posed for the mural). The center 'stage' section of the mural is based on a detail of a tile relief on the United Building designed by Charles Shaver.

Meant to convey a sense of dynamic beauty and possibility, the large shapes of the tilework are divided by emanating rings of light that originate from the act of artistic creation within the boy and girl. Behind and above the tilework are references to the city waterworks and one Salina's majestic grain elevators.

Where's Your Neighbor?

2010-06-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

This past May, while I was working in Tonkawa, Oklahoma, I took a few days off to attend the Community Built Association's 20th Anniversary Conference in New Orleans. Cruising down U.S. 271, my car was loaded with paint, brushes and drawing materials because, as a part of the conference, I was going to lead a mural workshop at the Lower 9th Ward Village - a small community center that emerged after Katrina to bring neighbors together and help with basic needs. The driving force behind the Village is Mack McClendon who has made it his mission to reconnect Lower 9^th Ward residents with relatives and friends who left during the storm. To help in this effort, Mack wanted us artists to work with local folks to create a map that symbolized the Katrina diaspora, or in Mack’s words “Where’s your neighbor?”

At the back of the Village’s warehouse, which was being set-up for a fundraising auction, ten people gathered around a make-shift table to brainstorm. The idea was to create a visually captivating map that would remind people that many neighborhood residents, for different reasons, were still not home. Some died. Some fled the storm, found new homes and did not intend to move back. Some wanted to come back but didn't have the resources. And others had returned to the area but could not reoccupy their homes in the Lower 9^th.

Making a map of the U.S. would be easy enough and we had a pretty good idea of how people spread out after the storm, but the mural team wanted to embellish the artwork with more than just the facts. We scrounged around the warehouse and nearby alleyways for materials and inspiration.

Mack brought us a coil of telephone wire. Someone else found an old doorknob. Perfect. The doorknob, emblazoned with a Fleur-de-lis, was attached to the mural and became New Orleans. The telephone wire, after we stripped it down and divided its many intertwined colors, was tied from the door knob out towards cities where people took refuge, each color indicating a different predicament or intention - red for not coming home, yellow for wanting to come home, green for back in their home, and black for back in New Orleans but unable to to reoccupy their house. Five hours of painting and wire stretching later and the mural-map was finished and ready to be installed in front of the community center. But how would the greater neighborhood (people who didn’t frequent the Village) know about this effort?

Somehow we had to spread this small painting out into the streets where more people could see it. The next day, and my last on this visit, we used scraps of plywood and old roofing to reproduce details of the larger map.

When they were dry, our crew scattered out onto the nearby streets and hung, wired, and placed the panels on fences, old street signs, and abandoned buildings. Hopefully, the would be curious enough to catch people's attention and lead them to the Village.

Someone drove by and asked what we were doing and, after they heard our story, asked if they could have one of the paintings for their house. We followed him down the street to his house where this small portion of a map of the Katrina diaspora was hung carefully and with pride on the wall of the front porch. Other neighbors inquired about the brightly colored paintings, and within an hour or so all twenty small panels had found homes.

This little mural/map (and its satellites) of “Where’s Your Neighbor?” was just a beginning I told Mack. A lot more could be done, and now it appears it will be. Just the other day someone sent me this article. It looks like the New Orleans artist group NoLA Rising is proposing a giant mural with a reproduction of our little mural/map as its centerpiece.

Tonkawa - Completed Mural

2010-06-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

Before

After

Details

Mural Dedication - "We Love Tonkawa"

2010-06-04T21:36:00.001-07:00

Mural Dedication - "Tonkawa" performed by Amber Hansen and Nicholas Ward

2010-06-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

Tonkawa Mural Dedication - "Prayer Song"

2010-06-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

Tonkawa Mural Dedication - "Appreciation Song"

2010-06-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Tonkawa - Behind the Scenes II

2010-05-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

In the final days of painting, we've been challenged by obstacles - some of our own making and others from ... above. First, and most terrifying have been the Buffalo GNATS. Nothing will repel them - not bug spray, vanilla extract, skin so soft, after-shave, alcohol, or patchouli - all of which have been offered as sure fire remedies.

The gnats go for moisture. Nicholas is seen here in a
losing attempt to keep them from going up his nose.

Another obstacle to painting has been the ever increasing time allotted to socializing with the locals. It seems they enjoy (and we, wanting to fully understand Tonkawa culture, must oblige them) leisurely meals accompanied by tumbleweeds, red wine, and (you got make it to believe it) egg coffee.

Recently, to the chagrin of our adopted feline Gustav Ruffkat, a number of these gatherings have taken place atop the roof of the Tonkawa Funeral Home (seen above) where we have been staying in the beautiful "Rest in Peace" bed and breakfast.

We also have been diverted away from our primary duty by a higher calling - escorting turtles off of major and minor roadways onto safe turtle territory. This is easy enough when it comes to box turtles and red-eared sliders. Snapping turtles are another matter.

Be aware if you're ever faced with the task of moving a snapper, there is a wrong way to handle this reptile. In fact the only way to insure that you'll come out of the experience with all ten digits on your hands is illustrated above.

And as there is more to look at on the wall, there have been more and more visitors who stop by to give us their two-cents about what should, could, or definitely should not be in the mural. But the quickest we've set down our brushes was in response to a slender hissing snake in the sky just west of the mural site.

This little twister or 'twinkie' as some people around here call them, appeared from an isolated little cell that blew up at the end of a sweltering day. We watched it dance over Tonkawa, trying to land, but never quite having the juice to find the ground. It was mesmerizing and beautiful, and looked almost like it had a mind of its own - a cloud with an idea about what it wanted to be.

Fortunately, even in light of all these necessary distractions, and mostly on account of my great assistants Amber and Nicholas and remarkable community support, the mural is almost finished. The dedication will be Thursday, June 3rd at 6 pm. You're all invited.

Tonkawa - "Design! - The Film"

2010-05-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

"Design! - The Film'" Shot and edited by Nicholas Ward and Amber Hansen with occasional steering and much appreciation from Dave.

Tonkawa - Painting Begins

2010-05-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Under overcast skies with temperatures in the low 60's, we set-up the paint table with brand new quart containers of Nova Color paint in hopes of enticing passersby to apply the first colored strokes to the mural. There were only a few curious onlookers when we began at 5:30 and still no one brave enough to make the first mark.
photo by Irene Ackerson
But as people got off of work and word spread of free homemade desserts, they started showing up - a gaggle of kids on bmx bikes, a family with grandma, folks from the Tonkawa Tribe, and even a few high school students who concluded, I imagine, that the mural was cool enough. And they kept coming. An hour later there was a real crowd, for Tonkawa, (over eighty people by our count) painting, watching, eating cupcakes and apple crisp, and playing games and chalk drawing in the middle of blocked off Grand Street.

The practical task for 'community painting days' was to block-in big areas of color that form the background shapes within the mural design. Anyone who wanted to, or who lingered too long watching, was handed a brush and directed toward a specific area to fill-in.
photo by Irene Ackerson
Inviting the community to paint was also an opportunity for mural design team participants to share with other townsfolk the genesis of the imagery in the design and how it related to the spirit of Tonkawa's past, present, and future.

Among the many local people who came out during community paint days were beloved local artist Gene Dougherty,

Tonkawa police officer Travis Painter (yes Painter),

local fashion mavens Michelle and Wiladean,

and Gordon Warrior with four generations of his family.

After painting wound down and the sun set, more than sixty people made their way over to the field behind Dollar General for popcorn and a free outdoor movie.

Tonkawa - Transferring the Design and Color Studies

2010-05-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

Checking the radar on Amber's computer, it looked like we'd have a three hour window of tornadoless weather (this is no joke - there seems to be a tornado or two in the vicinity at least once every day). Power for the LCD projector and laptop were drawn from a city utility box attached to Tonkawa's lone stoplight at Main & Grand. All we needed was for it to get dark. While we waited anxiously for the sun to slip below the horizon, people cruisng down Main Street slowed down, curious to try to figure out what was going on. Then finally, at around 8:30 with only an afterglow of twilight in the sky we turned on the projector...

With the help of a couple local tech wizards, a core group of steady handed painters, a dj, and a few cheerleaders the line design was transferred to the 124 foot wall using thinned down paint in a little over two hours.

photo by Ken Crowder

In what seemed like only a moment, eight inch tall hands from the mural design were transformed into ten foot tall hands on the wall, Max Carr's plane went from toy size to almost real plane size, and for the first time we got a glimpse of how the mural would look at full-scale.

Back in the studio at Northern Oklahoma College, Nicholas, Amber and I began translating our line design into a 3/4 inch = 1 foot color study collage made out of cut paper. Using cut paper instead of paint at this stage allows for quick changes in color and value, and because cutting and pasting doesn't favor small details, it forced us to focus on larger shapes within the overall composition as opposed to more superficial embellishments.

Tonkawa - Priming the Wall

2010-05-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

Here is Nicholas and Amber's second short film documenting the Tonkawa mural project. While watching, listen for excerpts from their new song "Tonkawa."

Tonkawa - Mural Block Party!

2010-05-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

Block Party & Mural Painting Kick- Off
Friday, May 14th
5:30 - 8:30pm
Corner of Main & Grand in downtown Tonkawa

Events

Community painting on the mural
Live music
4 square, jump rope, hopscotch, dancing
Community supper and free dessert
Make your own street pastel painting

Dave at a street painting festival in Kansas City

And then when it gets dark... A free outdoor movie with free popcorn in the field behind Dollar General!

For more information on these events contact the Chamber of Commerce at 580-628-2220.

Tonkawa - Design

2010-05-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

At my studio in Lawrence, Amber, Nicholas and I began sorting through boxes of research material. We rolled out long pieces of paper that represented the wall at a 1/2" = 1' scale and started scribbling and sketching down images and words (that represented images) to see how they looked juxtaposed together. In my experience this is is the hardest part of any mural project - working to transform and distill the vast collection of ideas and images into a composition that is both visually compelling and conceptually meaningful.

In our early studies, we decided to use divisions in the wall created by metal downspouts to organize the design into five sections or panels. From left to right we settled on five interrelated themes:

1) Max Carr delivering newspapers from his airplane (which will highlight events from Tonkawa's history) to rural Kay County farms .

2) Railroad Cisco of the Tonkawa Tribe describing to a group of students the tribe's journey from Texas to Oklahoma in the 1880's, and the Land Run that followed in 1893.

3) A symbolic scene showing a representative group of Tonkawans playing a traditional drum, nestled within giant hands cupped together in the shape of a heart, that radiates waves of sound, memory, and aspiration back through history and forward into the future.

4) A group of local folks around a coffee table fixing, painting, and reimagining the downtown.

5) A whimsical representation of Tonkawa's creative spirit symbolized by figures setting the moon and stars into a twilight sky as an outdoor movie is projected behind them.

Back in Tonkawa, we presented our design to the mural team. They studied it carefully, and after a good discussion it was approved with the understanding that we would reincorporate a couple dancing atop the grain elevator and add a Buccaneer (the high school mascot) somewhere in the last panel. Next step: cut paper collage color study.

Tonkawa - Behind the scenes I

2010-04-22T13:16:00.001-07:00

For our regular go-around design team warm-up, Nicholas asked everyone to reveal nicknames they've been known by for better or worse. In the photo, there's Ken, Audrey, Michelle, Clayton, and Edward contemplating whether they'll fess-up while I record their monikers for posterity. We discovered that in our group there is a Boompa, Breezy, Amburger-hamburger, Red-thunder, Laundry, Clam-chowder, Rag-mop, and Trany-pop-switch-techstyle-fatty-handrail-90-grinder to name just a few.

Experts with a t-square and tape measure, Gordon, Fernando, Audrey, and Irene (behind the camera) measured our wall down to the 1/8th of an inch. The resulting dimensions: 15 feet tall by 124 feet and 7/8ths of an inch long.

Anna, a daughter of the Tonkawa Daylight Donuts owner, is also one of the youngest members of the mural design team. Here she's seen hard at work on one her many remarkable short stories describing what we should put in the mural. Below are few excerpts from her ongoing series...
"Draw a mermaid listening to loud music and she dance everywhere!"
"Draw five people treasure hunting and then draw other people and then they end up seeing each other and when they get tired they say to each other - Are you ok? Nobody should be enemies"
"Draw kids drinking coffee and write Don't drink coffee it makes you shorter. I tried it once."

Pancakes had to wait as a 93 year old Max Carr described his technique for delivering the Sunday paper from the cockpit of his airplane to farms in Kay County in the 1930's.

No one could have predicted that priming the wall was destined to become a roller vs. roller showdown. But when President of Northern Oklahoma College, Dr. Stacy (left) arrived with his wife Dr. Stacy and their grandson, it was on. He faced off against all comers (photographer Ken - Clam chowder - Crowder is seen being bested here) and not only out painted them, but did it while wearing a suit and tie. The wall was primed in no time, and just like Tom Sawyer, I hardly had to paint a lick.

Amber and Nicholas studying volumes of the 1960-70's Tonkawa News at the newspaper office.

Tonkawa - Research II

2010-04-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

Tonkawa is one of many north central Oklahoma towns who's founding story goes back to the celebrated Cherokee Outlet Land Run. As it's often re-told - at noon on September 16, 1893 over 100,000 would be landowners readied themselves at the Outlet's eastern border/starting line. A shot was fired into the air and the race to lay claim to sections of the 6.5 million acre area was on.

But the story is not that simple, because the Outlet like much of the Oklahoma Territory, had been for many years the federally designated home to Native Americans of many tribes including the Tonkawa, and the opening of this area to new settlement meant that those tribes had to give up most of the land promised to them in perpetuity . Amber, Nicholas and I were fortunate to get a brief illustrated history of this from Tonkawa Tribal President Don Patterson during our visit to the Tribe's community center just east of town. At a dry erase board in his office, Don described the ever shrinking parcels of land Native Americans have been 'given' by the U.S. government, including the Tonkawa, who in 1885 were living on 96,000 acres. Today, Don told us, that 96,000 acre reserve has been whittled down to only around 1,000 acres of fragmented allotments.

Over and over during our research we have heard that the land, how it's settled and the resources it provides are fundamental to the identity of Tonkawa. At our last mural design team meeting, residents reflected on the legacy of the oil boom & bust years, the coming and going of the railroad, memories of the Salt Fork and Chikaskia rivers, and the steadfastness of local farmers some of whom have passed their land on to descendants for more than a century. And although there was a certain sense of pride expressed in what had help establish Tonkawa, some on the design team wondered aloud if looking backward in time, the way many murals in the area do, was enough, especially in light of ongoing economic challenges facing both the tribe and town. A few folks suggested that the mural might be more meaningful to young people if it expressed an acknowledgment of present circumstances, cultural diversity, and a vision for the future in addition to references from the past.

Our initial research is just about finished. Now comes the tough part - trying to coax out a picture story, both meaningful and visually captivating, that conjures the spirit of our conversations, the facts and figures we have gathered, and the input from people in the community that has been shared with us. It is an imperfect process, and as I keep reminding everyone who asks whether this or that will be in the final design - This is just the first mural. There are lots of great walls in Tonkawa just aching for a good idea and a little color.

Tonkawa - Washing the Wall

2010-04-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

This short film is the first in a series of glimpses behind the scenes of the MAAA - Tonkawa Mural Project. "Washing the Wall" was shot and edited by Nicholas Ward and Amber Hansen.

Tonkawa - Mural Assistants

2010-04-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

With only a few days left before the Tonkawa project was to begin, I found the roustabout mural couple Nicholas Ward and Amber Hansen contemplating the post-MFA art world in front of the Bourgeois Pig in Lawrence. Both had recently cleared the next to last hurdle before becoming terminal degree artists and were anxious to put their skills to the test.

But Hansen, originally from Iowa, and Ward, a native of South Dakota, are no novices when it comes to wall painting. Known in some parts as "The Kansas Muralists," this multi-talented couple bring painting, film-making, stop-motion animation, ukulele, and other yet undiscovered talents to the project, and I am pleased to have them as mural co-conspirators here in Oklahoma.

Tonkawa - Design Team Research I

2010-04-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Spring had arrived in Tonkawa by the time I returned for the mural design team's first meeting on April 8th. Red buds were in full bloom. Kids skateboarded down Main Street. Garage and rummage sales seemed to emerge out of front yards, along with daffodils and tulips, on every block.

I dropped my bags off at the Tonkawa Funeral Home. We'll actually in the beautiful B&B on the second floor directly above the funeral home. Originally used by relatives of the deceased who wanted to stay with the body of their loved one, the proprietors Edward and Carla Blackwell, have graciously opened up this three bedroom apartment for the muralists to stay in during the project.

As part of the community process, the mural design team is a group composed of about fifteen people from Tonkawa, young and old, long-time residents and recent transplants, students and business people, from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, who can bring a range of perspectives and experiences to the table. Their personal knowledge of Tonkawa and their individual visions for the mural will be integral to creating an art work that has lasting meaning for the community. We first met as a group in the ceramics studio at Northern Oklahoma College, where Audrey Schmitz teaches, and began by imagining how we would like to describe the finished mural, and what were essential images that we felt needed to be included.

I wrote as the group imagined, remembered, and predicted. After an hour or so, we had a list of over a hundred images, places, historical events, and people - enough for five murals at least. At the end of our meeting, we decided that to further our research in the next few days we would 1) do research at the local historical museum, 2) take a walking tour of important spots downtown and photograph them, and 3) set-up 'Give us your two cents about the mural' booths at the Methodist Church pancake breakfast/rummage sale and at Dorsetts Grocery Store (seen below).

Tonkawa - 1st Community Meeting

2010-04-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tonkawa for the first mural project community meeting on March 28th. Before the meeting, as people flowed into the conference room at the First National Bank, I looked around at a gallery of panoramic photographs of Three Sands oil filed and the town that sprang up around it in the 1920's. Back then Tonkawa was known as the "Billion Dollar Spot," due to the discovery of these incredible oil reserves. Today, although you can still see a few oil pumps churning away south of town, the skyline of derricks that used to dominate the horizon and the bustling town around them are all but gone.

By two o'clock there was a crowd of about thirty people ready for my presentation, which is basically a fifteen minute history of murals from the cave paintings in Lascaux to Giotto to Rivera to the New Deal post office murals and finally to the contemporary community mural movement beginning with the "Wall of Respect" in Chicago, followed by a brief overview of the development of my murals and how I go about choreographing their design and execution.

After the slide show and a break where we all had a chance to get some cookies and punch, we reassembled and I asked the audience to share with me how they envisioned the mural at this early stage in the process. I wrote their comments on a flip-pad as they spoke: wheat heart, Cherokee Strip Land Run, Tonkawa Tribe, state football champions, Three Sands, the Heart in the Park Labyrinth, the Chikaskia and Salt Fork Rivers, and the POW camp began the list. It was clear right away that Tonkawa was rich with a layered, interwoven, and deeply felt cultural history, and that residents (at least the ones who came to this meeting) were engaged in an ongoing dialogue about how that history was preserved and told, and how it influenced the identity of the place they lived in today.

The meeting ended with a few of us, including Audrey Schmitz and Ken Crowder, walking down Grand St. to look at potential walls for the mural. There were three or four excellent spots, but we all seemed to agree that Tonkawas's first outdoor mural might have the biggest impact on a wall (seen below) at the intersection of Main and Grand, home to Tonkawa's lone stoplight.

Tonkawa, Oklahoma

2010-04-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

I first visited Tonkawa, accompanied by Art McSweeney from Mid-America Arts Alliance (MAAA), this past January. We were on the road doing site visits to communities that had been selected as finalists for the MAAA Mural Project in Oklahoma, and Tonkawa was our first stop. Pulling up to Tonkawa's lone stoplight at the corner of Main and Grand, I recognized features common to many small towns in the Midwest - the two block downtown with as many vacant storefronts as those doing business, the water tower emblazoned with the high school football team's recent state championship, and at the heart of downtown, standing taller and sturdier than any building around despite the fading paint on its surface, the co-op grain elevator.

For someone like me who grew up in a big city, towns like Tonkawa often elicit a hard to pin down emotion of a sort of quaint sentimentality mixed with concerned sadness. I love the look of these places, the unrefurbished beauty of bricks and boards that have been worn and colored by time, but am also aware that these weathered surfaces may be signs of the precarious economic position they are in. How uplifting it was then to meet residents of Tonkawa who, while not blind to their town's challenges, emanated a genuine sense of possibility and community pride that I hadn't expected. Driving back to Kansas after visiting the last of the finalist communities in Oklahoma, it was the people of Tonkawa that stuck with me. More than other places we visited, I could envision their community coming together around the mural project.

Mid-America Arts Alliance Mural Project

2010-04-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

After nearly a year of preparation and planning, the Mid-America Arts Alliance Mural Project has kicked into full gear. Part I of this two state pilot project is underway in Tonkawa, Oklahoma through the end of May, and will be followed by Part II in Newton, Kansas in July and August.