{"id":25477,"date":"2024-10-01T13:20:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T19:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-new-mural-in-mancos-brings-a-dull-wall-to-life\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:17:43","slug":"a-new-mural-in-mancos-brings-a-dull-wall-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-new-mural-in-mancos-brings-a-dull-wall-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A new mural in Mancos brings a dull wall to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Keith
Keith Smith (left) and Duane Koyawena stand in front of their mural on LivWell in Mancos. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A week and a half after artists began the mural at the corner of U.S. Highway 160 and Main Street in Mancos, it\u2019s finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who drives by will see it,\u201d said Mancos Creative District\u2019s Executive Director Chelsea Lunders. \u201cI\u2019m really excited to have such an important wall feature Indigenous art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mancos Creative District was awarded an Arts in Society grant in 2020 to fund an artistic project that would impact society.<\/p>\n

Originally, Lunders reached out to Cortez-based artist Keith Smith to create the mural, but he said he lacked experience painting on such a large canvas.<\/p>\n

Smith recommended she reach out to Duane Koyawena, an artist with mural experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Duane showed me what he had in mind, I just was like, \u2018I think this is it,\u201d Lunders said. \u201cIt was a unanimous yes when we saw Duane\u2019s design.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Koyawena spearheaded the project, and Smith worked with him, \u201clearning and kind of shadowing him in the process,\u201d Lunders said.<\/p>\n

\"Keith
Keith Smith (left) and Duane Koyawena add finishing touches to the mural. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Though the Creative District had money for the project four years ago, the pandemic skewed the timeline, as did its location on the LivWell marijuana dispensary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough Colorado law, it had to run through the company\u2019s compliance department,\u201d Lunders said. \u201cBasically, they don\u2019t want something that expressly draws children because of the nature of what they sell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clara Martinez, a former board member with the Mancos Creative District who wrote the grant, said she wrote it with the intention of bringing Indigenous art to Mancos.<\/p>\n

\u201cMancos is on Ute Mountain Ute land and there\u2019s zero representation of that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The town has two mottos. It\u2019s \u201cA Gateway to Mesa Verde National Park\u201d and \u201cWhere the West Still Lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have Native roots, and I\u2019ve lived in Mancos for 34 years. Almost that whole time, I\u2019ve felt the void of representation of the Ute people living here after the Ancestral Puebloan culture and still here alongside the more recent pioneer cowboy culture,\u201d said Martinez. \u201cMancos isn\u2019t just a cute cowboy town \u2026 there\u2019s more to Mancos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koyawena and Smith, the two artists who created the mural, echoed that point.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially for Mancos, you don\u2019t see much of the Indigenous-type style of artwork, it\u2019s all Western themes, stuff like that,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

They said their mural honors the original inhabitants of this area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese designs are from thousands of years ago,\u201d Koyawena said.<\/p>\n

The black-and-white design of the background is inspired by similar looking pottery from Mesa Verde that goes back 1,500 years, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just really amazing that back then, that many years back, they were able to develop these kinds of patterns,\u201d Koyawena said. \u201cThese are just some of the patterns I\u2019ve seen on some of the pottery. There are others that are very intricate and that really amazes me.\u201d<\/p>\n

To get it right, a lot of measuring went into it, which was possibly the hardest part, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey used to just do this on their pots and their cups and stuff, probably without even thinking about it and just doing it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m amazed by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The waves and the hummingbird on the mural tactically point toward town.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of has a directional flow to it that we hope welcomes people and ushers people to turn into our town,\u201d Lunders said.<\/p>\n

She also said public art like this of course beautifies a space, but it\u2019s more nuanced than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, it beautifies, but the social and the psychological and the physical benefits really go deep,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m always trying to champion for that and encourage people to take the time to think deeply or to spend some time with the artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koyawena is Hopi, and he said to him, the hummingbird represents innocence and purity.<\/p>\n

Smith, on the other hand, is Navajo, and he remembered something his grandfather used to tell his mother about hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

Like a moth or a butterfly, hummingbirds have dust on their wings, Smith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told her, if they\u2019re able to cup a hummingbird by the palm \u2026 with that dust on their wings, so when they captured that dust on their hands, they used to rub the dust on the horse\u2019s legs to make it run faster,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

As far as painting goes, the mural is finished, but Martinez said they\u2019re talking about adding a QR code to it so people can stop and scan it to learn more about the significance of the art and its Indigenous roots.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mural isn\u2019t totally complete because the informational piece is still to come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sometime soon \u2013 either this fall or early spring \u2013 another mural will be going up in Mancos, and this one will engage children, Lunders said. An artist named Dai Salwen will be creating it, and the location has yet to be determined.<\/p>\n

These mural projects are largely made possible by a partnership between the Mancos Creative District and the town of Mancos, which prioritizes art in the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always looking for the spaces, the public spaces that are best suited for new pieces of artwork,\u201d Lunders said. \u201cWe really want to keep it going. It\u2019s always a matter of finding a good chunk of funding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to give Indigenous art a platform, draw travelers to town<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[363,28,83,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78955,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25477\/revisions\/78955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25477"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}