Artwrit article on Community Art in Mid-America

Here's a link to Kyle McKenzie's (assistant on the mural The Butterfly Effect) latest article for Artwrit on Huffington Post. It's titled Community Art in Mid-America and includes portions of an interview Kyle did with me in September.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/artwrit/community-art-in-midameri_b_2145030.html

R.I.P. for Quinton's murals "Sunflower Cycle" and "Ignorance, Pride and Fear"

Some murals don't last forever, especially when they're done for a retail business.

Back in 1992-93, I painted my first murals in Lawrence at Quinton's bar and deli on Massachusetts St. I was in grad school at the time, but my commitment to it was fading. I was having a hard time finding purpose solely in studio work - I wanted to make art for an audience outside of academia and art galleries. Then one day another painting grad student, Connie Erlich, mentioned to me that this new bar in town was looking for someone to paint a mural outside in their beer garden. I went to visit the bar. After some haggling, we agreed. I would get to use my own design. The owners would pay for paint and for lunch while I worked. 

"Sunflower Cycle" 1992

Sunflower Cycle (which came before the bike shop down the street), was an idea I had while working on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1990. Over the course of that summer, as I worked planting garlic and harvesting broccoli, I saw giant sunflowers grow, bud, blossom, and then slowly collapse under the weight of their mammoth seed heads. They marked time, were beautiful and seemed to emerge in the fields like lighthouses among the waves of vegetables. I made drawings of them and imagined painting a mural of their cycle on an old semi-trailer parked in one of the fields. I never got around to it (I was asked to paint giant garlic on the semi instead), so when the Quinton's opportunity came along, in my new home in the 'Sunflower State,' I had the design pretty much ready to go.

"The Garlic Express" painted in 1990 at Rose Valley Farm in Rose, NY

There were no classes on mural painting at KU, no internet to find a tutorial, and no muralists in the area that I knew of,  so figuring out how paint the 17' x 35' foot wall was a serious challenge. Fortunately, there was one good book at the public library. It was aptly titled "The Mural Manual" written by Mark Rogovin. A great primer on organizing and painting community murals, it gave the most practical step by step advice and I still use it today. With the Mural Manual as our guide and help from my friends Irene and Angus, we went at it.

Mural helpers Angus and Irene

At the time, there were few murals in town. Sunflower Cycle, which could be seen all the way from 6th Street, really stood out and people were excited. So much so that the owners of Quinton's wanted more. This time they wanted a mural for the inside of the bar and this time they were going to pay -$800. I was beside myself. I'd never been paid close to that much for an artwork. When I asked what they were thinking of as a subject, they said  "We love what you did out back, so do whatever you want." Really.

Where Sunflower Cycle was a design I'd been carrying with me since my time on the farm, the mural inside was going to be a new idea taken from my thoughts about grad school, Lawrence, and my new interests in the great Mexican muralists Orozco, Rivera, and Siquerios. Ignorance, Pride and Fear was a pretty straight forward idea - 'We're all trapped in psychological boxes of our own making that feed off of ignorance, pride and fear' - but it gave me the chance to paint big figures in a style akin to Orozco, I hoped.

Irene and Angus helped again, this time posing for two of the three figures by curling up underneath the kitchen counter in my apartment. To help paint, I asked my friend Mike Han, who was an undergrad in the painting program at KU. We transferred the design to the wall using an overhead projector and then painted in the mornings before the lunch rush. The figures were symbolic types - a student, a businessman, and a farmer each trying to break out of their boxes. I was concerned that the owners might balk at such a dark theme, but to their credit they stuck with it. That was twenty years ago.

"Ignorance, Pride and Fear" 1993

A few weeks ago, Ignorance, Pride and Fear was painted over to make room for beer advertising, while Sunflower Cycle has been gone for a couple years now, spurred by the city's new smoking ordinance which forced bars to build elaborate outdoor decks. First Quinton's built a two story deck that obscured a large part of the mural, later it was replaced entirely with a painted rendition of the  Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City.

Today, a much newer, and in my mind more significant, mural is in danger.  The Pollinators mural on New Hampshire Street, which serves as a backdrop the Lawrence Farmer's Market, is threatened by a proposed new upscale development.

"Pollinators" 2007

This mural is particularly important to Lawrence and the region.  In addition to it being a unique celebration of and monument to great African-American artists from Kansas, Pollinators has risen to become an identifying feature of our local food movement and a beloved symbol of the city. It is also an important outreach of the Spencer Museum of Art, which commissioned and owns the mural.  I believe that losing Pollinators would be a tragedy for the community and those working to celebrate and remember our shared cultural heritage.

"Sunflower Cycle" wall 2012

"ignorance, Pride and Fear" wall 2012

Losing the two murals at Quinton's, and the threat of losing the Pollinators, means that Lawrence loses a few more places where art can occupy civic space amongst the wealthy interests of developers and the sloganeering of advertisers. Whether they are murals I have worked on, murals by other Lawrence artists, public sculpture, graffiti, or improvised art interventions, we need to take care to protect our downtown from this kind of cultural erosion. Without public spaces for art, we lose part of our particular, personal, idiosyncratic Lawrence character and style.

"Reject Brownback" posters available

Hot off the presses, these very sharp 11" x 17" posters are available for just $2 a piece. You can find them at the Lawrence Percolator or directly from me - just email me how many you'd like.

"Seeds" mural restoration begins

Today we began restoring "Seeds," a mural I completed in 1996. Feel free to come paint a few strokes, beginning this Saturday, on days when the temperature is over 55 degrees. Below, a glimpse of how the fresh new color looks...

Before

After

And here are a couple photos taken in 1996 during the painting process.

Arkadelphia Mural Dedication

Join us for a ....

Celebration of the new 

Arkadelphia Community Mural

Sunday, October 7th

2:00 - 4:00 pm

705 Main Street

Arkadelphia, Arkansas

more information at 

http://midamericamuralproject.blogspot.com/

Brownback Print CENSORED!

*UPDATE* The Blue Planet informed me that they did not agree to censoring this piece and do not condone or support its being taken down. The piece was taken down by Greg Ready of Gizmo Pictures as you can read below.

C E N S O R E D !

This print was taken down by the owners of Gizmo Pictures today. If you care about free speech especially when it involves criticism of those in power, please call and or visit Gizmo Pictures (upstairs above the Blue Planet) and let them know how you feel. Below is the text of the email I received from, Gizmo co-owner, Greg Ready informing me that the piece was to be censored.

"Dave,

This is Greg Ready. I'm not sure if we have met or not, but I am part owner of Gizmo Pictures and the Thacher building where your artwork is being displayed in the Blue Planet Cafe. We have chosen to take down the picture of Sam Brownback burning out of respect to his daughter Liz, who works for us. This decision has nothing to do with politics or our belief in your freedom of speech through art. Liz is a valued employee and friend to us and I (we) felt strongly against subjecting her to having to look at a picture of her father burning at her place of employment. It should also be noted that this decision was made by me, with the backing of my business partner Jeff, and not at the request of Liz.

I hope you will understand. If you wish to discuss this further, feel free to call either phone number listed below, e-mail or drop by my office at Gizmo (upstairs from the Blue Planet). 

Thanks."

Contact the owners here:

Jeff Carson and Greg Ready, owners of Gizmo Productions

785-267-7878  

greg@gizmopictures.com

jeff@gizmopictures.com

110 SE 8th Avenue, Topeka, KS

Read articles about this story at these links below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/kansas-artist-dave-loewen_n_1940225.html

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/oct/04/lawrence-artist-miffed-after-topeka-restaurant-tak/

http://cjonline.com/news/2012-10-03/artist-miffed-censorship-brownback-print

 

New show at the Blue Planet in Topeka

I've got a new show of stencil prints at the Blue Planet, 110 SE 8th, in Topeka. It'll be up for the whole month of October. The work comes from two different series I've been working on over the last couple of years. One is a series of portraits of Kansas politicians gone awry, including...

Secretario De Xenofobia

Inspired by the new Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach who is best known as the architect of anti-immigration laws in Arizona. Back here in Kansas, he’s been fanning the flames of immigrant paranoia in legislation that would require proof of citizenship if someone looked “suspicious.”

 The Feral Senator 

Another Kansas original, state senator Virgil Peck who, during a March 14, 2011 senate hearing, said (when referring to a state program to manage feral hogs) that "If shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem." 

 Reject Brownback

After enduring one horror after another, from a draconian tax-cut plan that will cripple the state to the elimination of the Kansas Arts Commission,  I came to the conclusion that our governor was powerless to stop the destruction he is wreaking. Like some giant movie monster, he flails around pleading for someone (us) to stop him from doing more damage.

The second series in this show comes from work I've done in support of the Occupy Movement. These prints were used in rallys, protests, and as illustrations related to Occupy. I'm proud to have been a contributor to the Occuprint  group which has been the main venue for getting my posters out to the public. 

My poster as an illustration for a Barbara Kingsolver 
essay in the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

The most widely circulated of these was "Tip of the Iceberg." This was my response to the dismissal by many of Occupy as just a New York thing. It’s based on both a metaphor, that Zuccotti Park is an iceberg, and on a veiled analogy to the Titanic disaster. What’s not spelled out in the image, but helped drive my process, is the story of the Titanic and the hubris that led to its sinking. In early versions, I had a little ship about to hit the Zuccotti iceberg, and even tried out text like “Beware Captains of the 1%”. In the end I felt like I was complicating my main idea – that the movement is much larger than the encampments -  so I took out the Titanic references.