peoples of the columbia
DESCRIPTION
Thesis paper for the Pacific Northwest College of ArtTRANSCRIPT
1
A Thesis Presented to the
Pacific Northwest College of Art
Peoples of the Columbia
In Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements
for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree
Esteban Camacho Steffensen
2010
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Approved by
Avantika Bawa
Research and Writing Faculty
Arvie Smith Barry Sanders
Thesis Mentors
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Table of Contents
List if Illustrations……………………………………………………………..5
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………...……..6
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………….7
Introduction …………………………………………………………………..8
Creating a Mural Model …………………………………………………..….9
Historical Narrative ………………………………………………………….13
Artistic Influences ………………………………………………………..…..20
The Emerging Ecozoic Era ……………………………………………….…..22
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………..….27
List of Works………………………………………………………………....29
Works Cited………………………………………………………………….30
Bibliography………………………………………………………………….31
Appendices…………………………………………………………………...33
Artist Statement…………………………………………………………...…34
Proposal……………………………………………………………………...35
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List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,
Oregon. Page 11.
Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,
Oregon. Page 14.
Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
Page 15.
Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.
Portland, Oregon. Page 17.
Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
Page 19.
Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.
Page 25.
Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.
Page 27.
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Acknowledgements
To the people of the Columbia River, its magnificent history and
sacred water.
The School of Social Work, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, our
team of muralists, artists, friends and my entire family.
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Abstract
My art represents nature yet imbedded in it is a social dialogue,
which is at the heart of political and community art. This project is a
commission for the School of Social Work at Portland State University
in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest College of Art. I will
investigate how a public mural project interacts with the atmosphere of
an austere building, transforming the interior space and empowering
the people in that space. This social collaboration has enabled me to
do outreach, to explore, and to discover new forms of public art as an
ideal medium for community building.
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Introduction
My thesis project attempts to forge a dialogue between local
Pacific Northwest history and present social, economic, and
environmental concerns. The mural will demonstrate an optimistic view
of our local history, highlighting groups of people working in nature,
and creating an inspirational space for the education of social work.
This project gave me the opportunity to create an historic and
figurative mural with a team of college art students for the state in a
brand new eco-building.
I paint large murals that aim to beautify spaces and create
atmospheres over existing urban walls. With mural art, I intend to
reinsert the natural world, visually, into our urban societies. One of my
goals in producing murals is to bring images of sustainability and hope
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to communities around the world through the education of art, and
local ecosystems by representing flora, fauna and human history in a
contemporary context. I feel that being in nature allows people to relax
and I hope to create that effect and opportunity visually.
The overarching motif in this mural is the Columbia River that
ties all the mural panels and all of us to our local environment. Water is
a crucial element in my paintings because it is the foundation of life on
our planet. It is also evocative of global concerns related to the sea,
climate change, and ecological balance. I think it’s important to create
art that shows awareness of our river, which is the force that gives us
clean water, food, energy and habitat. In this paper I will argue that
collaborative mural projects are incentives for communities to unite,
learn, and engage in social and environmental action.
Creating a Mural Model
I wanted to organize a community project between the Pacific
Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and Portland State University (PSU) to
strengthen the connection of our art communities and institutions in
Portland. This project involved the organization and recruitment of
college students to participate in a cross-campus public mural. The
physical workspace is in the School of Social Work at PSU, so I invited
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both communities to participate. Over 25 students responded to my
call for artists. Students from PNCA and PSU and many local artists
collaborated throughout the full execution of this project, successfully
interweaving these communities. Teamwork and collaboration became
a crucial and challenging element of this endeavor. Through
fundraising and lobbying I created a fund to administrate and give
stipends to the volunteers, creating a scenario where students needed
to show their portfolio, bill me and in turn be compensated for their
work and help. This altruistic approach to art education and business
interested many people to become involved. Some students would
shadow and follow me throughout the entire process. At first we
created a practice mural that was 18’ x 9’ in my studio at PNCA. This
gave us a space to create our team of muralists and integrate our
different styles and skills. It also gave me a chance to learn more about
the other students, such as their own reasons and interests in
collaborating with me on a commissioned mural.
Collaboration goes beyond art making and intersects social
practice, entrepreneurship, partnership, education, and an endurance
of negotiation to manifest ambitious community projects. Being the
mural director made me realize that a social artist should be able to
complement his profession and communicate with many other kinds of
professionals to enable artistic events to take place in a wider context.
Environmental artists can become catalysts in the environmental
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movement. They spark ideas in the public’s imagination with their art.
In turn, artists reach new dimensions by collaborating with politicians,
biologists, community activist, etc. I am advocating for artists to take a
more official and responsible role to empower and connect all the
different communities in our local areas and the world. As an artist, I
want to break away from the paradigm that we are at the margins of
society. Now more than ever, artists must be at the center of society,
helping different communities to better visualize our interrelationships.
Working with diverse communities: the State, universities,
institutions, students and local artists, forced me to create images for
these people to coherently visualize their ideas and mine. I was able to
undertake this giant project with out losing my artistic and ambitious
dream thanks to the support of everyone. The painted mural is only a
sliver of a vast social and political process in public art, which
comprehensively outweighs the final product. This process has great
potential to empower a larger audience.
Mural painting does not serve only a decorative capacity,
but an educational as well. By education I do not mean in a
descriptive sense, portraying cinema-like the suffering or
progress of humanity, but as to the plastic forms and
treatments in the art of painting. Since many workers,
school children, or patients in hospitals have little of no
opportunity to visit museums, mural painting could and
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would open up new vistas to their neglected knowledge of
a far to popularized Art. (Gorky 15)
I began collaborating with the surface of the wall by finding
relationships between the architecture, social work, history, present
and urgent environmental issues. This site-specific project is reflective
of the gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
building certification; this standard has encouraged me to use recycled
paint and eco-conscious painting practices, emphasized in the careful
use of paint materials and a thoughtful use of brushes to ensure their
longevity. During working hours, conversations with the public served
as feedback and this exchange developed into an interdisciplinary art
form.
Figure 1. Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,
Oregon.
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As lead artist, peer and colleague of my student collaborators I
assessed their skill, level of interest, and professionalism in order to
manage and create a unified picture. This process served as a way for
me to network and find potential artists to hire and collaborate for
future projects. Instead of being selective I invited all people who
wanted to participate allowing for a full range of skills and
personalities. We tried several approaches to collaborative painting.
These experiments tested my skills in managing and leading a group.
It challenged me to create painting sessions where I would begin
painting in an area and my artist friends would then take over and
imitate what I was doing. In other cases we would fill large base colors,
paint with transparent glazes or create smooth transitions from light to
darker colors. Smaller groups of people worked more effectively than
larger ones because then I had to be directing rather than painting.
The students’ help enabled me to execute the project much faster, and
their company and input also helped me to see new perspectives.
Students preferred specific tasks because the scale was intimidating
and our goal was to create an image that I had designed. I had hoped
that the students could express themselves artistically; however, this
mural was not about the aesthetics of collaboration, but a project
where other art students collaborated as workers and painters under
my direction.
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I also tried to give other young artists the chance to gain
confidence engaging with the professional art world. Through this
interdisciplinary activity, all participants were able to combine social
work, social justice, and environmentalism with their own art practices.
And the project helped create a new bridge between PSU and PNCA
where new relationships were formed between several distinct student
and professional groups, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed. I hope
that the project has opened the door for more inter-institutional art
projects between the two.
Historical Narrative
This mural commissioned for the School of Social Work is
significant for me because it merges so many disciplines, however the
stronger element in the mural reflects my ecological commitment,
which is also present in the design of the building. “This building was
built from the ground up with sustainability in mind. Its rain water
harvesting system, geothermal heating and cooling, elliptical workout
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machines that generate electricity, and much more earned Portland
State another Gold LEED certification.” (The New Rec Center)
The walls of the School of Social Work located on the sixth floor
of the new Academic Student and Recreation Center (ASRC) offer a
stunning panoramic window view of Northwest Portland. I created
images to function as windows into our historical past, which contrasts
with the view out the actual windows. The historical subject matter
represented in the mural stands in opposition to the contemporary
cityscape. This allows viewers to have an aesthetic relationship
standing between the past, the present and the future. I hope the
viewer will feel more deeply inspired and connected to both. The ASRC
is in the center of the PSU campus; it is also located on the busiest
transportation hub in Portland. We created self-portraits through the
historical figures as another way to interrelate our historical past with
our present lives.
Through various meetings with the mural committee, we
progressively narrowed the focus of the theme: from social work, to
immigration, to the impact of the land, then to Oregon’s history of
social work. After receiving input from the mural committee I
determined the paintings would depict the local history of the Vanport
floods, the damming and flooding of Celilo Falls. The panels are
metaphorical of social work, representing different groups and
communities in juxtaposition and harmony.
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Going with and against the flow of the Columbia River, the mural
is divided into four panels, which reflect powerful events of social
injustice in Oregon’s history, as well as the diverse ecological habitats
where these events took place. The parallel between these disastrous
events is the social displacement of communities, which is also
occurred as a result of the social engineering of the Columbia River.
Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,
Oregon.
The Vanport Flood of 1948 was the worst flood in Portland’s
history, represented in the first panel. As a symbol, it represents the
largest influx of minorities into Portland, changing its social structure
from primarily Caucasian to our current multiethnic population. This
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event corresponds to the segregation of African Americans after
Portland’s worst flood, the Vanport Flood. It inundated downtown and
left over 20,000 people homeless in North Portland. This site was also
the birthplace of Portland State University, which was inundated and
relocated in Southwest Portland. The panel symbolizes how people
come together to help each other in the event of a natural disaster.
This image tells a story of the Vanport Floods, but also alludes to the
more current disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in
Haiti.
The Vanport flood forced the government to industrialize the
Columbia River to protect the city from future floodings and to
generate hydroelectricity and develop industry. The dam is painted as
a symbol of conflict between our different lifestyles and political
priorities. The dynamic features of the mural allow viewers to move
from panel to panel as the mural crosses the hallway and passes
through several doorways.
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Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
The second panel is about the damming and flooding of Celilo
Falls in 1957. The construction of dams on the Columbia River
displaced many Native American communities and destroyed
important natural habitats for flora and fauna. The construction of the
Dalles Dam is Oregon’s most controversial dam project, which reflects
the economic and political marginalization of Native Americans during
the 20th century. Celilo is an ancient convergence point where the
eastern desert and the western forest meet, where animals, plants,
and cultures traditionally came together. Wyam (Celilo Falls) was the
most important fishery and point of contact between Indians in all
directions (Yakima, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Chinook and the Confederate
Tribes of Warm Springs) from as far as Alaska, Idaho, California and all
of Oregon.
On March 10, 1957, the Native American community of Celilo
and the Northwest region looked on as a rising Lake Celilo rapidly
silenced the waterfalls, submerged fishing platforms, rock formations
and consumed their village, thus extinguishing one of the oldest
continuously inhabited communities on the North American continent
(11,000 years old). In this panel the sky is painted in a surrealist way.
The clouds transform into the reflection of the undersurface of the
water, suggesting an underwater landscape. This gives the illusion that
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we are looking up at the sky and up at the surface of the water. I did
this because all these platforms, rock formations and cultures are now
submerged. The three ghostly figures are painted in the palette of the
cliffs and petroglyphs. They represent the spirits of the chiefs of the
lost traditions that once lived or came to trade here. Celilo, once the
Niagara Falls of the Columbia River, has vanished now with them.
The federal government considered the eradication of Indian
culture and political autonomy as a positive outcome of the damming
Celilo Falls (Roberts 12). This new historical mural will give a voice to
repressed peoples who don’t have a voice in the media, but can still
have one in public art. My representation of these undervalued
cultures and displaced members of society gives these people a voice
in contemporary art. It also invites all viewers to learn more about our
regional heritage.
The central image in this panel is a mother with her fist in the
water, holding a child on her lap while sitting on a fishing platform. This
iconic figure has a number of symbolic meanings. One of the traditions
at Celilo, at the beginning of Salmon season, was to take the first fish
caught and hold a ceremony in honor and respect of the animal.
Children were present and the animal was offered back to the river.
This figure is three times larger than life size and it’s my
representation of a contemporary Madonna and Child protector of the
workers, both European and Native American. She also represents
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Mother Nature, creator and protector of future generations. I painted
her fist as a symbol of human strength and the struggle for survival.
Her fist in the water represents the shared and continued struggle for
survival that not only confronts Native Americans, Salmon, but also all
of humanity.
Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.
Portland, Oregon.
My hope is that people will discover and learn more from
traditional, ancient cultures. I am interested in painting the Native
American communities because I want to focus on how they once
coexisted harmoniously, and sustained the natural environment to
ensure the renewal of abundance, especially the seasonal return of the
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spawning salmon. The Columbia River formed our region. Therefore it
ties together the panels with dynamic gestures of water in movement.
The third panel takes place in Central Oregon and it’s metaphorical of
social work. Four children work together constructing a cairn mirroring
the cliffs in the background, asserting the connection between nature
and humanity. It is about the importance of youth and the playful spirit
of children acting in harmony with the natural environment. This panel
was painted with primarily earth tones, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna and
Burnt Umber and I was thinking about the relationship between the
color of our skin, the color of the Earth, and the relationship between
humanity and nature.
The fourth panel juxtaposes two extremely different ways of
harvesting wood. I painted the first pioneers cutting down the oldest
and largest Douglass Firs and Red Cedars, reinterpreted from an
historical photograph taken by Darius Kinsey in 1898. He documented
the transformation and the extermination of our primary forests. I
wanted to contrast this unsustainable system of forestry, so embedded
in modern Oregon culture, with an ancient Native American way to
harvest cedar bark and lumber planks using simple tools and sheer
bodily strength. The Red Cedar has an astonishing straight grain
allowing the wood to be easily wedged out in vertical planks. Bark can
be made into baskets and it even provided food. This process created
giant scars, but did not circumscribe the trunk, allowing the tree to
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heal itself. The great trees continued living, perpetually gifting wood to
the tribes who practiced this technique. I believe these are admirable
traditions, which provide inspiring examples of sustainable harvesting.
My research has assisted me to understand some of the
antagonistic relationships among different social groups and historical
perspectives, where modern progress and human security are in
conflict with the environmental, social, and economic well being in the
Northwest. The juxtaposed groups of people I painted hint at our need
to find a way to better coexist and unite as one people living still in the
bounty of the Columbia River.
Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
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Artistic Influences
My work has a dynamic and a classical composition, focusing on
the landscape, and the amalgamation of figures, united with an organic
sense of movement. My motivation to paint in the way comes from my
first hand experience of seeing Italian Renaissance murals when I
traveled in Florence, Italy in 2006. During that trip I was fortunate to
see the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli. Their work
inspired me to understand the scale of mural art from some its most
powerful masters. Their work represents pure devotion to and mastery
of light, architectural space and natural landscape. Some of the fresco
paintings were distorted, designed to be viewed from specific angles,
and the quality ranged from impressively realistic to very loose, where
one could appreciate the artist’s hand and style from 600 years ago.
For this mural I have treated the composition in this classical
tradition using naturalistic linear perspective and atmospheric
perspective creating an impacting view of the ecosystems of North
Portland, the Columbia Gorge, Central Oregon and the Cascade Range.
These classical influences enlighten viewers to consider the intrinsic
and ideal connection to our natural environment.
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The figure composition is also classical but in some ways it’s a
pastiche of Postmodernism, WPA, Mexican, Impressionism and
scientific illustrations. This array allows for a larger balance and
historical content. I intended the treatment of the figures to be
expressive and in the realist language of the Mexican and American
muralists, which deals more specifically with political and social issues
for a public audience. I feel it is time to revive specific components of
the Mexican, WPA and Harlem Muralist Movement of the early to mid
20th century in order to promote economic and ecological
sustainability through a new 21st century mural language. The social
realists of Mexico and the United States such as Diego Rivera, José
Clemente Orozco, Thomas Hart Benton, Aaron Douglas, and the
contemporary Chicana artist form California, Judy Baca strongly
influenced my work. This figurative artwork has allowed me to connect
to my Central American heritage of mural painting. This perspective is
aggressive and political, being an important structure in many
revolutions. It’s important to reinforce this American heritage as
culturally powerful in response to the cultural stereotype of Latino
labor workers in Oregon. As a Costa Rican American and muralist, I
addressed the history of the region to connect the audience to the
ancient Mayan, Aztec, and Native American line of artistry. Even the
Mexican muralists used classical approaches such as chiaroscuro and
main light sources, yet they were pioneers in using these picture-
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making resources to paint peasants and ancient aboriginal motifs. I
feel that these influences resonate in my work and I am able to glean
from the technical achievements of Renaissance art, and the Mexican
muralists, while applying imagery from our regional Native American
culture and history in this mural. These languages are intended to
provoke the viewer to experience the “other”, reversing our primary
culture: English/American. This fusion between these traditions and
visual languages suits didactic imagery for historical, social, and
controversial topics.
The Mexican Muralists’ developed a dynamic language of
painting; it took the best from local indigenous histories and combined
those with renaissance realism and modern dynamic and multi-
perspective compositions. Their realistic and expressive representation
of figures speaks to our human condition, and suffering in Latin
America, which is core to my heritage and many in the Portland
community. The Mexican muralists turned revolutionary propaganda
into one of the most powerful and significant achievements in the 20th
century art. In a film about David Alfaro Siqueiros, we hear his words
from his Manifesto for artists of America in 1921: “We repudiate what
we call easel painting and all art of an ultra intellectual vein as
aristocratic, and we extol monumental art expression as being part of
public benefit.”
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This call to make monumental art was the spark that started the
great Mexican and American Mural Renaissance; the content was
historical and revolutionary. The artists gathered and reproduced new
interpretations of ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec art; they also
painted Mexican workers, peasants, and leaders in their class
struggles. My hope is to have recreated a similar fusion of indigenous
and contemporary imagery with a political impact, exalting our local
ethnic native and migratory history to address the current
environmental crisis.
Murals for the Emerging Ecozoic Era
In light of the current global crisis of global warming, which has
the potential to make the planet inhospitable to human life, we must
reinvent a new idea and goal for humanity, other than those currently
in place. And we must find the means to continue to create common
cause across the increasingly violent cultural divides. A recent concept,
that is not yet widely known, could assist in this effort. It is the idea of
establishing an emerging Ecozoic era. The Ecozoic idea represents a
new promise that the Earth’s future can still be a place of mutually
enhancing relationships between humans and the larger community of
life systems. (Eco means house and zoic means life. So Ecozoic means
house of life.)
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These various mural art movements have encouraged me to
begin to think of ways to jumpstart a new mural renaissance or an
artistic revolution for the “Ecozoic era”. The term Ecozoic, coined by
the historian Thomas Berry, names a new era for humanity to find a
new creative and life-affirming balance with the natural world. This era
provides a new conceptual framework, which encourages and supports
our choices to move towards carbon neutrality and social generosity.
It has the potential to give people hope because it names a period of
time that is potentially bigger than that implied by global warming.
In this project, large community images or murals could create a
new a sense of community identity because the scale of a mural is
integral to the public realm and allows them to engage with their
community members. Murals help to build a sense of community
because they are often done by groups of people and for the local
community to have a voice in the larger world.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to be part of
something bigger than themselves which will help the planet and
humanity. But they need more encouragement and less finger
pointing. Martin Palmer, of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation,
asserts that environmentalists have been using tactics of blame and
scarcity in their well-intentioned efforts to get people to change. Many
environmentalists recognize that we have come to the end of the
modern industrial era. It is essentially over, because if it is continued, it
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is likely we will destroy the life sustaining potential of the planet.
Therefore if we are mature enough to recognize our situation, we must
also recognize that our role in relationship to the planet must change.
Art and graphic images are an important element in non-violent social
change and artistic revolution. I am trying to create murals to awaken
hope to the possibilities of creating an Ecozoic era. I want to support
communities around the world to experience positive education,
collaboration, and a new evolutionary view of artists in society. I will to
continue painting murals and giving communities the initiative to
engage in grassroots and humanistic events through these projects.
The key will be to integrate this term as an Earth manifesto and to
socially and economically reintegrate our selves into new and ancient
sustainable patterns.
When the mural Peoples of the Colombia River was finished I
noticed the visual connection between the roof garden on the fifth floor
and the forest painted in the mural, the green instantaneously
connected the outside and the inside, further reinserting the natural
world.
We have too many walls and concrete surfaces that repress us.
“There can be no mural without a wall. [From old Latin: murus "wall"]
This simple condition of mural making greatly impacts its planning,
process, and reception, and largely distinguishes it from other forms of
public art” (Lohman 1). The art and the community transform the
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environment. Murals have a significant role in creating community and
engaging the public, whether they are private commissions,
commercial work, trompe l’oeil or faux, murals for restaurants, but
especially inspiring are public murals in schools, streets, public areas,
and museums. Murals also create an intellectual space because fine
art, landscape and social imagery combined are intense ingredients for
conversations in communal social change.
Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.
When I am painting a mural the wall texture, smell, lighting and
the people become my home and family in a sense. In the context of
architecture, wayfinding is a term referring to the paths we choose
within the built environment. Murals help people find our way around
because they alter space in a very unique way. People make sense of
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these spaces; imbue them with significance and familiarity.
Consequently murals transform spaces into places. For this new
building, the mural will help create a sense of community. The
audience is not only there to witness the finished object, but to learn
and observe its creation. A woman asked me: What is this about? And I
asked her: What do you get from it? She responded, “I feel it’s about
people coming together, unity. In this mural people are coming
together in a natural and a social disaster, from the premise of the
human community, our ability to link and stand together can stop the
flow of water”
Ethnographic research takes into account both tangible
and intangible factors and acknowledges that local people
have the most in-depth knowledge of local circumstances.
Respect [and] willingness to be open minded about local
interpretations of acts and behaviors, and an
understanding that it takes a certain amount of time before
a community comes to trust and feel confident in the
[artists] ability to reflect their reality [in a mural]. (Lohman
1)
Murals engage individuals and groups to work towards designs,
preparatory work, paintings, drawings, research, meetings, events, and
field explorations. The desire to research history, science, interview
community members, elders and professors, the general public, and
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influential artists will eternally and continually echo in an artists work.
It is in this vast dialogue and learning process, where I find motivation
to continue making murals and collaborative art projects. The entire
world complements art just as art is the reflection of our entire world.
Since the end of the lawsuit when Clear-Channel sued the city
and banned murals, the nonprofit for Portland’s Mural Defense has
fought back and helped to create a city code that protects muralism in
Portland. The new code supports artists to undertake mural endeavors
again and now the city supports public art more than ever before. With
the current economic recession, art markets have been drowning. But
collaborative initiatives that link public art projects with various
institutions and funding organizations have the potential to persevere
in this difficult economic climate, while also providing artists with a
chance for political expression. Students graduating with art degrees
are far more successful if they have collaborative and networking skills
in addition to their artistic talents. In this vein I am looking to open
opportunities for emerging artists to collaborate with me on future
murals and as a way to give back to my local community.
Conclusion
Public murals and community art collaborations become focal
points in urban settings, transforming the environment in positive
ways. My responsibility has been to carefully research the local culture,
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history and environment pertinent to the location and goals of the
mural. My personal artwork is strongly based on realistic and
impressionistic depictions of flora and fauna, which I have researched
with biologists to provide accurate portrayals of ecosystems, albeit
with artistic license. I used collaboration, documentation and teamwork
to analyze and judge the success of the process. The work has been
assessed based on accuracy of the local environments, both the
natural ecosystems and the human history. The work represents two of
Oregon’s most significant instances of social injustice and links their
historical occurrence to current social challenges.
Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.
What is the role of a mural in creating a sense of community? To
draw parallels between pertinent subject matter and positive imagery,
since public art will articulate a message for many years to come.
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Consequently, I want the constituents’ experience to be positive and
self-reflective. In contemplating my work, I have received very positive
comments and believe that they will ignite and motivate communities
to change and improve society. I hope these projects will inspire a
more holistic humanitarian connection to nature because they depict
humanity both positively and critically. I hope the mural with continue
to encourage the public to think about past and current challenges of
our times and to seek a new dynamic balance of how our society
interacts with the natural world and the many cultures with whom we
share the planet.
List of Works
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Figure 1 Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,
Oregon.
Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,
Oregon.
Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.
Portland, Oregon.
Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.
Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.
Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.
34
Works Cited
Gorky, Arshile. Murals Without Walls: Arshile Gorky’s Aviation Murals
Rediscovered.
Newwark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1978. Print.
Lohman, Jonathan "The walls speak: Murals and memory in urban
Philadelphia.” University
of Pennsylvania: ProQuest. 202. Pag. Web. 1 Jan 2010
Palmer, Martin. Interview with Mary Colwell. Recorded video for the
Alliance of Religions
and Conservation. Web. 24 Mar. 2010.
Roberts, Wilma. “Celilo Falls: Remembering Thunder.” Wasco County
Historical. May
2007: 10-20. Print.
Tajonar, Hector. Siqueiros: Artist and Warrior. Mexico: Arte Multimedia
S.A., 1998. Film
“The New Rec Center.” pdx.edu. Portland State University , n.d. Web. 1
April
2010.
35
Bibliography
Boime, Albert. The Magisterial Gaze. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991.
Finkelpearl, Tom. Dialogues in Public Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT-Press, 2000.
Folgarait, Leonard. Mural painting and the social Revolution in Mexico,
1920-1940. USA:
Cambrige University Press, 1998.
Gorky, Arshile. Murals Without Walls: Arshile Gorky’s Aviation Murals
Rediscovered.
Newwark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1978. Print.
Hehingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left. London: Yale University Press,
2002.
36
Hurlburt, Laurance P. The Mexican Muralists in the United States.
Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Iosifidis, Kiriakos. Mural Art: Murals on huge public surfaces around the
world from Graffiti
to Trompe l’oeil. China: Publikat Verlags-und Handels GmbH &
Co. 2008
Lacey, Marc. “Cultural Riches Turn to Rubble in Haiti Quake.” The New
York Times
January 24, 2010 International/Americas. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
Lohman, Jonathan "The walls speak: Murals and memory in urban
Philadelphia.” University
of Pennsylvania: ProQuest. 202. Pag. Web. 1 Jan 2010.
Ludwig, Coy. Maxfield Parrish. New York: Watson-Gultill Publications,
1973.
Macmurray, Eloise. The Washington Park Fences Project. Portland,
Oregon: Tri-Met and
the Regional Arts and Culture Council, 1995.
Marling, Karal Ann. Wall-to-Wall America. USA: University of Minnesota,
1982.
Matilsky, Barbara. Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists
Interpretations and Solutions.
New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 1992.
37
McKay, Marylin J. A National Soul Canadian Mural Painting 1860s-
1930s. Montreal:
McGills-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
Norwood, Susan. Diego Rivera and his murals. Yale-New Heaven
Teachers Institute. 2005.
11/14/05. www.yale.edu/ynntil/.
O’Brian, John and Peter White. Beyond Wilderness. Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University
Press, 2007.
Roberts, Wilma. “Celilo Falls: Remembering Thunder.” Wasco County
Historical. May
2007: 10-20. Print
Rolston, Bill. Politics and Painting. USA: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1984.
Staikkidis, K. “Learning Outside the Box: How Mayan Pedagogy Informs
a Community
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Skovgaard, Dale. “Memories of the 1948 Vanport Flood.” Oregon
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Staikkidis, K. “Learning Outside the Box: How Mayan Pedagogy Informs
a Community
38
University partnership.” Art Education Reston Vol 62 Issue 1
pages 20-24, 2009.
Tajonar, Hector. Siqueiros: Artist and Warrior. Mexico: Arte Multimedia
S.A., 1998. Film.
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Appendices
39
Appendix 1: Artist Statement
My thesis project attempts to forge a dialogue between local
Pacific Northwest history and present social, economic, and
environmental concerns. The mural will demonstrate an optimistic view
of our local history, highlighting groups of people working in nature,
and creating an inspirational space for the education of social work.
This project gave me the opportunity to create an historic and
figurative mural with a team of college art students for the state in a
brand new eco-building.
40
I paint large murals that aim to beautify spaces and create
atmospheres over existing urban walls. With mural art, I intend to
reinsert the natural world, visually, into our urban societies. One of my
goals in producing murals is to bring images of sustainability and hope
to communities around the world through the education of art, and
local ecosystems by representing flora, fauna and human history in a
contemporary context. I feel that being in nature allows people to relax
and I hope to create that effect and opportunity visually.
The overarching motif in this mural is the Columbia River that
ties all the mural panels and all of us to our local environment. Water is
a crucial element in my paintings because it is the foundation of life on
our planet. It is also evocative of global concerns related to the sea,
climate change, and ecological balance. I think it’s important to create
art that shows awareness of our river, which is the force that gives us
clean water, food, energy and habitat. In this paper I will argue that
collaborative mural projects are incentives for communities to unite,
learn, and engage in social and environmental action.
Appendix 2: Proposal
Northwest Rights
41
I will be painting and leading a mural for the School of Social
Work at Portland State University (PSU) on social and ecological
consciousness. The mural will depict the local history of the Vanport
Floods and Celilo Falls. The Vanport Floods of 1948 corresponds to the
segregation of African Americans and other minorities, but also a
turnover and renovation for Portland’s new multicultural position. The
industrialization of the Northwest, specifically the damming of Celilo
Falls in 1957 is a stark symbol of Native American economic and
political marginalization during the century. The parallel between these
disastrous events is the social displacement of communities, which is
the result of social engineering around the Columbia River with severe
economic, social and environmental consequences. My intention is to
recreate a fusion of indigenous and contemporary imagery with a
political impact that contrasts with our urban landscape.
The space is an interior 130-foot long wall on the sixth floor of
the new PSU Social Work facility. These hallway walls face a panoramic
window view of Northwest Portland. The historical subject matter will
contrast with this contemporary scene. Below on the fifth floor is an
exterior plaza and eco-roof with native plants. This site-specific project
is reflective of this new building with a gold LEED certification, which
encourages me to use recycled paint and eco-conscious painting
practices. Students from PNCA, the Native American Center and the
School of Social Work from PSU can collaborate in the execution of the
42
mural as a way to make this an interdisciplinary community project.
The time-based process of the creation of the mural will be
documented using video and photography. The physical mural will be
done primarily with recycled acrylic paint on the wall space at the
School of Social Work during the beginning of the Spring Semester.
The social realists of Mexico and the United States such as Diego
Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood
strongly influence my work. Their visual language best suits didactic
imagery for historical, social and controversial topics. The Mexican
muralists turned revolutionary propaganda into one of the most
powerful and significant achievements in the 20th century art. David
Alfaro Siqueiros wrote these words in his Manifesto for artists of
America in 1921: We repudiate what we call easel painting and all art
of an ultra intellectual vein as aristocratic, and we extol monumental
art expression as being part of public benefit. (Tajonar, 1)
This call to make monumental art was the spark that started the
Great Mexican and American Mural Renaissance. The content was
historical and revolutionary. The artists gathered and reproduced new
interpretations of ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec art; they also
painted Mexican workers, peasants, and leaders in their class
struggles. My hope is to recreate a similar fusion of indigenous and
contemporary imagery with a political impact. But I will exalt our local
ethnic native and migratory history and current environmental
43
consequences. As viewers walk though this public work I hope it will
trigger and inspire social and environmental thought.
Vanport, established in 1942 was the largest housing project in
the US for wartime ship-workers at the Kaiser Shipyards. This
temporary city was located on flood plains in North Portland and had
grown to be Oregon's second largest city with the highest African
American population in the state. On Memorial Day May 30, 1948, a
railroad dike made of landfill burst; the floodwaters of the Columbia
inundated the city of Vanport killing 15 and leaving nearly 17,000
people homeless (Skovgaard, 1). Although Portland was recognized for
trying to rescue both white and black populations equitably,
segregation patterns continued to persist. The Vanport Floods made
officials aware that nature needed to be tamed by mankind’s progress
to achieve manifest destiny. This was reason for the construction of
many dams, which would produce energy, enable navigation and
irrigation for farmlands but also prevent future floodings.
I am interested in painting the Native American communities that
once coexisted harmoniously and sustained the natural environment to
ensure the renewal of abundance, especially the seasonal return of the
spawning salmon, the nusook. Wyam (Celilo Falls) was the most
important fishery and point of contact between Indians of all directions
(Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Chinook and Warm Springs). It was a
convention point where the eastern desert and the western forest met,
44
where animals, plants, and people interchanged. The communities of
Native Americans living at Celilo comprised one of the oldest
continuously inhabited communities on the North American continent
(11,000 years old.)
On March 10, 1957, hundreds of observers looked on as a rising
Lake Celilo rapidly silenced the falls, submerged fishing platforms, and
consumed the village of Celilo, ending an age-old existence for those
who lived there. The federal government considered the eradication of
Indian culture and political autonomy as a positive outcome for
damming Celilo Falls (Roberts, 12).
Perhaps the most challenging part of this mural is linking
sustainable care of the Earth with the sustainable care of communities.
Social work strives to protect and care for different ethnic and minority
groups in our society. Some of these groups are children, veterans,
seniors and ethnic minorities. My continuing research will assist me in
understanding these antagonistic perspectives, where modern
progress and human safety are in conflict with the environmental,
social, and economic well being in the Northwest.
Public murals and community art collaborations become focal
points in urban settings, transforming the environment in positive
ways. My responsibility has been to carefully research the local culture,
history and environment pertinent to the location of the mural. These
processes overlap my artistic goals. My personal artwork is strongly
45
based on realistic and impressionistic flora and fauna depictions, which
are researched with biologists to provide accurate portrayals of
ecosystems. This is my first opportunity to create an historic mural that
strives to inspire the public to take notice of its cultural legacies as
they apply to the current and urgent need for our culture to make the
shift towards sustainability. My responsibility will be to draw parallels
between the subject matter and to make the imagery positive, since
public art will emanate a message for many years to come.
Consequently, I want the constituents’ experience to be positive and
self-reflective.
In conclusion, the creation of the mural for the School of Social
Work will experiment with a social realist style and combine
environmental issues to create a dialogue between these issues and
concepts relevant to the current social and environmental crisis.
Through this project I will represent two of Oregon’s most important
historical events and link their significance to current challenges.
Hopefully I will inspire the public about the need for a new dynamic
balance for how our society interacts with the environment.
46