Mural, mural on the wall
Art show offers peek at city's upcoming transformation

Artists Irving Bahe, left, and Erica Sykes listen Thursday as Paul Newman answers a question about his paintings on display at the Primal Image Gallery in downtown Gallup. All three artists are involved in the downtown mural project and will be painting their work onto buildings this summer. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — The Downtown Mural Project promises to change the look of downtown Gallup by the end of summer.

But for those who are interested in learning what those changes will look like, the Primal Image Gallery is offering a sneak peek during tonight's Arts Crawl.

The gallery, at 233 W. Coal Ave., is hosting "The Muralists/History in the Making," an exhibit of artist work-ups for the Downtown Mural Project from 7 to 10 p.m. The eight painters who have received the mural project commissions are scheduled to be at tonight's art show reception, and they will be available to discuss their projects with the public. Arts Crawl patrons will be able to view the projected mural designs, as well as earlier versions of the work, preliminary drawings, and studies of mural details.

On Thursday, The Independent talked with five of the muralists at Primal Image as they helped gallery owner Michael Nunes to hang the show.

Andrew Butler
Andrew Butler may have been awarded the most coveted mural topic. Butler's "The Coal Mining Era," which will be painted on the wall of the American Bar that faces the Downtown Walkway, was cited by several other artists as the mural topic they were initially hoping to be assigned.

Butler, a veteran muralist, has created a design that features both the positive and negative aspects of Gallup's coal mining history. As in many creative pieces of work, the negative aspects provide dramatic interest. Butler has included the 1917 Mentmore fire, which was blamed on Eastern European miners, tensions between mine owners and union organizers, the political struggles of Mexican miners, and the controversial downtown riot.

Butler said he plans to utilize more creative freedom and artistic optical illusions to provide visual interest to the part of the mural that focuses on the positive aspects of the coal mining industry.

Paul Newman
Paul Newman is the rookie muralist in the group. He will complete "The Great Gallup Mural," which will be painted on the east wall of the City Hall courtyard, just about two years after he enrolled in his first painting class. A newcomer to Gallup, Newman made a quick impression on the local art community when his work began to draw attention in Arts Crawl exhibits.

Newman's mural will focus on five big attractions that put Gallup on the map back in the 1940s and 50s: the railroad, Route 66, Hollywood film making, the cowboy culture, and mining. The mural will feature a "mural within a mural" design element, with the smaller mural scene painted in a style reminiscent of Depression Era WPA art.

Although Newman said his mural project has developed smoothly thus far, he joked that it remains to be seen if he will be able to make it up and down the scaffolding each day and if he will be able to survive the summer's heat, sun, wind, and rain.

Rich Sarracino
Eric "Rick" Leon Sarracino said his mural, "Gallup Community Life," challenged him to rethink his normal approach to design. A local commercial artist who creates signs and billboards, Sarracino said he had to retrain his thinking to a less commercial approach.

Sarracino said he found the mural's subject difficult to tackle because of its more sedate nature. He admitted he was initially attracted to subjects that were more controversial, but those proposed topics were nixed by the City.

Sarracino's design has a number of community themes - education, military service, arts and entertainment, medical care, religious worship, and others - radiating out of the mural's circular center like rays from the sun. His mural will also be located in the City Hall courtyard, on the wall opposite from Newman's.

Erica Rae Sykes
A former English teacher, Erica Rae Sykes is using the dual ideas of a woman storyteller and a little girl reading a book to tell the story of Gallup's "Multicultural Women" in her Children's Library mural. The Native American storyteller's breath line creates the framework of the mural's design, which features women of Native American, Hispanic, European, Arabic, Asian, and African descent.

Now an art teacher at Wingate High School, Sykes has worked with students to create murals at Wingate and on an exterior wall of D & D Auto. According to Sykes, having to work with her citizens' advisory committee has forced her to seriously think through each step of the creative process - a lesson she has worked to teach to her art students.

Richard K. Yazzie
In "The Long Walk Home," a mural depicting the return of Navajo people to Dinetah after four years of forced confinement at Fort Sumner, artist Richard K. Yazzie has attempted to understand the emotional state of Navajos returning to their homeland. For Yazzie, the emotions weren't hard to imagine: he returned to the Navajo Reservation after serving in the 1st Cavalry Air Mobile Infantry during the Vietnam War, and he recently returned to the reservation again after working for more than 30 years as a graphic designer in Wisconsin.

Yazzie's mural, which will be painted on the Coldwell Banker Building, moves from the sad and dark scene of Fort Sumner to the sun-washed canyons of Canyon de Chelly. Using Navajo cultural references like the colors of the four directions, a depiction of Mount Taylor, a rainbow stretching across the sky, corn pollen and a stalk of corn, Yazzie tells the joyful story of a people's homecoming.

Other artists for the Downtown Mural Project and their mural titles and mural locations include: Irving Bahe, "Ceremonial," above the Ceremonial office; Geddy Epaloose, "Zuni," the Octavia Fellin Library; and Chester Kahn, "Native American Trading," Tanner building on South Third Street.

For more information about the Primal Image exhibition, call gallery owner Michael Nunes at (505) 863-4680.

— Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola can be contacted at (505) 863-6811, ext. 218 or ehardinburrola@yahoo.com.