After returning from choir practice Thursday night, Margaret Gabaldon was greeted at home by a large and colorful mural-in-progress.
Native Public Art project, a collaboration among 1Spot Gallery, Ziindi: Indigenous Art Zine and Native American artists, attempted to bring attention to indigenous people through murals, said Michelle Ponce, director/curator of 1Spot and co-founder of Ziindi along with Damian Jim.
Ponce classified indigenous art as any art created by an indigenous identified person, regardless of what percentage he or she is Native American.
Spray paint artist Jaque Fragua painted the project’s first mural on Gabaldon’s home near Sixth and Roosevelt streets.
“It’s a platform for marginalized peoples to express and exchange with a community that they’re displaced within and with establishing that line of communication,” Fragua said.
Fragua said the theme of a phoenix is common among Phoenix artists so he decided to create his own interpretation.
Gabaldon said she was “flabbergasted” when she saw the mural.
“When (Jim) first showed me the sketch of what Jaque was going to do, I was a little bit floored and it was very bright and he said it was the new age, I guess, of Native American paintings and of artists what they do,” Gabaldon said.
Gabaldon, a retired schoolteacher, grew up in that home and moved back with her husband in 1980 after her father changed houses, she said.
Fragua started painting the mural on Sunday and planned to finish Thursday night, he said. He has painted murals across the nation, including San Francisco and Miami, and around the world, including Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada.
From the Jemez Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, Fragua said he began to realize the oppression and poverty surrounding Native people while traveling with his father on work trips to other reservations.
“When I learned about that, I understood there was a need for this type of art or this type of voice, or this type of communication and it’s as if Natives were the Jews of the Americas,” Fragua said.
“The things that happened here, in this city, and the history of the indigenous peoples in this area are totally buried,” he said.” So how does one acknowledge that history when it’s entombed? The people who are here have to dig for it and you’re not going to see it everyday on Roosevelt Row in the street or out there in the public or even in books or NPR. You know, it’s not there. Unless the people put it out there and public art is one way to do that.”
Ponce started the Native Public Art project with Jim. Ponce said she was considering having only three or four places for murals but having them re-done by different indigenous artists every three to six months.
“Sometimes it’s really good to just start fresh and once you say a statement and it’s out there and people see it and enjoy it, it’s time to do it over,” Ponce said.
Ziindi created an Indiegogo page, a website for people to fund independent projects, to experiment with crowd-sourcing. The goal was to raise $1,000 by Friday, May 31, according to the page. Funds will provide money for materials, renting equipment, water and snacks for artists.
The Native Public Art project raised $1,030 by Thursday, according to the page. This fund is the start of an on-going donation box for the project.
“To make it all crowd source funded just made it more to where the community was also invested,” Jim said.
Ponce said they would have funded the mural regardless but wanted to get support from the community. The current funds are enough to cover one or two murals, she said.
“This is not just my dream I wanted but a lot of other people actually want it too and it could actually be something bigger than one mural,” Ponce said.
Jim said the Native Public Art was looking for home and property owners who were willing to have murals on their buildings.
Native Public Art will be an on-going project that will hopefully expand past downtown to the greater Phoenix area, Tucson and Flagstaff, Ponce said. She said she wanted to create a mural collective of indigenous artists. She encouraged artists to approach them if they wanted to be a part of the project.
Contact the reporter at danika.worthington@asu.edu
