Dealing with a ... Mural Mess
Painting draws criticism; council approves its completion

The city has considered abandoning the mural-in-progess on the children's library wall due to public criticism. If the city axes the painting it will still have to pay the artist, so the mural will be completed. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

Pictured is a miniature replica of what the mural was to look like. [Courtesy Photo]

GALLUP — It's only natural that an artist can't please everyone. But when your customer is every taxpayer in the city, the critics can prove especially hard to ignore.

Erica Sykes found that out Tuesday evening in front of the Gallup City Council.

Critics of Sykes' work, a mural going up on the south-facing wall of the city's Children's Library, convinced the council to consider scrapping her work.

In the end, the council decided to let Sykes finish the mural, thanks, in no small part, to the passionate defense the artist and her supporters put up.

What finally settled the debate was money.

Sykes is one of eight artists in a $200,000 city project to cover Downtown Gallup's walls in murals of the area's history and heritage, each with a separate theme. Sykes' theme: the multicultural origins of the community's women.

The murals are slowly taking shape. But the city's taxpayers the project's financiers have been especially critical of Sykes' work.

Be Sargent, the local artist heading the projects, and city officials were very delicate in relaying the criticism they've heard.

The only criticism Sargent said she considered worth mentioning came from people who could not tell what the mural was supposed to be about.

The mural is more abstract than the rest to be sure. Mayor Bob Rosebrough noted as much. The mayor said he's received "pointed" comments about that, about the "sharpness of the images," and about the uniform color and tone of the characters' faces and clothes.

Rosebrough said he liked the draft Sykes painted before starting work, but agreed that the characters going up on the wall were not as clearly defined, were too monochromatic, and too abstract to suit the historic scope of the project. He did not agree with suggestions to do away with the mural altogether, but suggested moving it to a less prominent location.

The problem, agreed Sargent and City Planner Lisa Baca Diaz, was a discord between Sykes' draft and her mural.

Both women said they expected Sykes to refine her draft, adding more details that would help distinguish the characters and clarify their ethnicities.

"The extra details that would have made the mural clear were not in the execution" Sargent said. "I think that's where it fell down."

Sykes, upset by the debate, pointed out something that seemed to have escaped her critics: the mural was not done. Most of the work, she said, lay ahead.

"What is on the wall is not finished ... and a work of art in progress should not be judged," she said.

Now, she added, "because of a few bad comments, it's not being allowed to be finished."

Allison Dollar, in Sykes' defense, chastised the council for paying such heed to the critics.

"If you guys (the council members) set the level at three negative comments, you guys wouldn't be working here any more," she said.

No one mentioned exactly how many critics they heard from. Rosebrough would only say that he heard from several.

Dollar reminded the council how subjective art is by its very nature.

"There are people who don't like the Mona Lisa; I'm one of them ... but there are people who do," she said. "You're never going to get 100 percent agreement on anything."

Finally, she urged the council to remember that the mural was still a work in progress.

With roughly 65 percent of the mural left to paint and many details to be added, she said, "you have no idea what it's going to look like finished."

Sykes insisted she was only painting what a committee overseeing her work had approved.

"The committee approved every single step of this," she said.

Sykes said she had even modified her plans at the committee's insistence. The committee thought the portrait of Mother Theresa didn't fit, for example, so she took it out.

Baca Diaz noted other discrepancies. The two pieces of the mural that have been finished, the storyteller at one end and the goddess at the other, were markedly different from the artists' draft.

"It's not what the committee did approve," she said.

Eventually, the council got around to asking the city attorney what the city's contract with Sykes allowed for.

The city could let Sykes finish the mural or order her to stop, he said, but either way, it owed Sykes her money.

With that, the councilors made up their minds, deciding to let Sykes finish the job. Rosebrough and Councilman Pat Butler did, however, urge Baca Diaz, Sargent and Sykes to work together to make sure that, as the mayor put it, "we end up with a project we're all happy about."