May 20, 2021
Chris talks with Kerri Blackman and John Davis of Alpine’s ARTWALK about the development of the many murals in downtown Alpine, as well as plans underway for two new ones. Hint: Come see us for the Viva Big Bend music festival July 29-August 1, 2021 to enjoy the unveiling (and a 5K run!) for a mural celebrating Texas Musicians!
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Transcript for “Alpine’s Downtown Murals”:
Intro
Welcome to the heart of the Big Bend. It’s time to kick back, put your feet up, grab your favorite beverage or snack as we discussed, declare, proclaim, publicize and articulate about the wonders, magic, beauty, music and happenings here in the area known as the Big Bend of Texas.
Chris Ruggia
Hello everyone, welcome and thank you for joining us for another episode of Heart of the Big Bend. This is a weekly, bi-weekly, every other week we’re doing this podcast and radio show about visiting the beautiful Big Bend of Texas. Specifically, we will cover what’s happening in Alpine, an incredibly friendly, small town nestled in a desert mountain valley at the heart of the Big Bend region. With easy day trips from Alpine, you can take in everything this amazing region has to offer.
I’m Chris Ruggia, Director of Tourism for the City of Alpine, and today, I’m honored, thrilled, excited to have some very good friends of mine and some great assets to Alpine’s community, representatives of Alpine’s Gallery Night inc., the Artwalk group. We have Kerri Blackman and John Davis. Kerri is the executive director, I’m assuming?
Kerri Blackman
I am.
Chris R
And John?
John Davis
I am the President.
Kerri B
And founder.
John D
Thank you.
Chris R
Thank you both for everything you’ve done for Alpine through the service that this group and others for so many years, but today our main topic is going to be the murals in downtown Alpine. This is something that anyone who drives through downtown Alpine notices right away. There are several large-scale, very beautifully done murals around downtown Alpine and then the more you walk around, the more murals you find. At the Alpine Visitors Center and on visitalpinetx.com, you can find a walking tour of the majority – but by no means all – right now of the murals that you can find in downtown Alpine. Now Kerri, I give you actually credit for starting this wave of art beautification in downtown Alpine because you were, and still are, but you primarily were running a gallery in the central intersection of downtown Alpine.
Kerri B
Right. 28 years ago I came to town, probably 30 years ago. I was in school and had been working as a framer for Kiowa Frames. Barbara Jones asked me to purchase the place and of course my mom and I went into it and became Kiowa Gallery. At the time, I had just visited down south and I had saw the mural that Style Reed ha done at the Starlite Theater. I was entranced, I just had to have one.
Chris R
That’s an iconic one, too.
Kerri B
It’s very iconic. I wanted one on the side of my wall. Mom and I talked about it and we loved the idea of Milton Favor from Cibolo Creek. He owned Cibolo Creek Ranch. Anyway, crossing cattle, we’d heard the story of him crossing cattle at night in full moon and stealing back his cows or something. So Style Reed and my mom and I came up with this whole crazy wonderful mural idea.
Chris R
It was a stunning mural idea, too. Just beautiful
Kerri B
The problem was we didn’t know anything about murals back then. I didn’t know hat there used to be a hamburger stand there that all the grease from the exhaust fan blew in the middle of my wall from years and years ago. We didn’t prep the wall properly. That mural started peeling in great big sheets because water got behind it from the parapet wall on the top. It started peeling the mural off. So we had to power wash that thing and make it go away. Then we did it again, and Style actually put a UV coverant on it, and everywhere he missed with his gun where it was airbrushing on there, it was striped. When the west sun was hitting it, so what was happening was it wasn’t peeling, but it was fading.
Chris R
So the first mural was one lesson and the second mural is a new lesson.
Kerri B
Yes. Finally we have the third mural, which has a small portion of the Style Reed – the first one that we started. The Milton Favor one. We went with big Brewster, which was telling the story about Brewster County. That’s the mural that still exists.
Chris R
That one, it’s unmistakable because right towards the end of the building is that Alpine postcard, which is where people love to Instagram and hashtag their visit to the city. So thanks for giving us that spot. Then I think, once you’re there, the very next thing you see is the other wall in the corners at the intersection of 5th street and Holland avenue, there’s a little plaza there with the Kiowa gallery mural facing you as you come up Holland avenue. On the corner from that, there’s another one. That was a whole new initiative, right?
Kerri B
That one was a gift from Artwalk Board of Directors being in a nonprofit for 20 years that we wanted to give to the city, the tourists, to everybody. We came up with and wanted to do a mural in a weekend.
Chris R
You almost did.
Kerri B
We almost did; it took us a while. We did it during Viva Big Bend six years ago. No seven years ago.
Chris R
For folks who don’t know, that’s the Viva Big Bend music festival that’s at the end of every July.
Kerri B
Right. We came up with the Mexican murals. The Mexican calendar tops. They would have these beautiful calendars that they would give away as a mercado or a business, they would…
Chris R
Tons of restaurants you’ll see handing these out to clients.
Kerri B
What we came up with was we wanted to take that idea, poco e poquito, then we of course incorporated our Catholic Church, and a little man with a burro, anyway we made it our own. We raised money by actually selling the days on the calendar. So there’s a calendar underneath everyone of those murals that we’ve done.
Chris R
That was the July of that year, right? So when you’re coming through, if it’s July, don’t rely on that calendar to make you rplans. It’s in the past.
Kerri B
It’s in the past. It’s the year that we did it, excatly.
Chris R
But then you kept going. That’s what’s pretty amazing.
Kerri B
Yeah it’s pretty hard to stop me from doing stuff. We started picking out other walls to start think about doing. Asking other businesses, can we paint a big mural on your wall? Of course, everybody’s like, “heck yeah!” So we went to the wool house next. We have the it’s more of a mercado market and it was a combination of maybe four or five Mexican calendar tops. That’s how we came up with that one.
Chris R
Say you’re on 5th street and Holland Avenue. You’re looking at these two murals we just talked about. If you then cross the railroad tracks to Murphy Street, you just turn to your right and look across the open lot there, you’ll see the – it’s at the roof line, the little triangle witht he calendar below that.
Kerri B
It’s pretty incredible.
Chris R
One thing before we move on I want to acknowledge Artwalk as what that is. It’s a two day music and art festival. Primarily galleries is where it started as Alpine’s Gallery Night. You both had galleries the first time it started. We don’t want to go too far in to the weeds on that one, but I want to make sure everyone knows that the weekend before Thanksgiving in November every year is one of Alpine’s signature events – one of our biggest art events by far. The group that’s putting this event together for us is also then making permanent art all over the downtown. We had two and then how many total?
John D
This will be our sixth.
Chris R
That you’re about to start. So we have five in existence right now that you can find on that mural tour. One other thing that I just want to point out before we talk about the new mural is that your activity inspired then a lot of smaller murals to pop up. In particular, one unexpected little spot. There’s the alleyway between 5th and 6th streets and between Holland Avenue and Avenue E. That’s the core of Alpine’s downtown. If you walk up this little mural, just one back of a business at a time.
John D
This is kind of the alley art area. We’re going to incorporate that into Artwalk this year. That’s going to be more than just the main street because people don’t really get out and see those murals. I hadn’t really been back there, but we’re going to focus Artwalk on that alley so those murals are exposed.
Chris R
In a way, it’s like you guys have been making these single large scale images and in a way this alley is one large scale collection of much smaller but I think there’s at least ten back in this alley right now.
Kerri B
It’s a great concentration of creativity. I really love it. I go for a walk every morning and that is part of my tour. I go through the alley every day and go see the beautiful creativities that everybody’s been doing.
Chris R
I feel it’s such a nice counterpart to what you all have been doing. You’ve been building a body of work with a consistent style, which really – hahah, Style, Style Reed the muralist who’s been painting this – it’s really a consistent vision that you guys have built up in this portfolio of walls. Then in the alley, it’s all kinds of different people working in all kinds of different styles. It’s such a nice balance.
John D
It’s a mural gallery.
Kerri B
It feels really nice and it looks like there’s plenty of room to expand
Chris R
Yes, definitely. Now that we’ve mentioned what is here now in Alpine, but there’s much more to come. I understand you guys are well underway on your next mural project. What’s that going to be?
Kerri B
It’s been six years in the making. Actually, Printco used to be where Trans Pecos Guitars was. They were in the building when we started painting Poco e Poquito. Joe and Betsy decided they were going to build a building across the railroad tracks and they said, “we’re going to give you this wall.” Six years ago! We talked about it with Joe and Betsy, and Joe said, “I’d like for it to be…” – he’s very musical, he loves the Beatles.
Chris R
Doesn’t he though.
Kerri B
Yes. He said he’d like it to be a tribute to Texas musicians so that’s where we started. We actually had other murals in the making that we were going to do first. We were going to do it in 2019, we finished the Texas Ranger mural. We were going to work towards 2020, and then of course, the pandemic, so we kind of let it go. We’re full steam ahead now, and we plan on doing a stage of iconic Texas musicians. Troubadors, singer-songwriters, and it’s very controversial. It’s very hard to put 38-40 people on a stage and you’re going to leave somebody out.
Chris R
Everybody knows who they want to see up there.
John D
It’s very tricky because you have Texas legends, yet they weren’t born in Texas. Jerry Jeff Walker, Texas legend but he was born in New York. So we’ve kinda added a few that may not…Ray Wylie Hubbard, born in Oklahoma, I believe.
Chris R
But very identified with the state.
Kerri B
Yeah, so we’ve had to make some…
Chris R
You know, Texas welcomes. We’re welcoming. You can come and be.
Kerri B
I like that.
John D
More and more and more people kept coming out. The list kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So we’ve narrowed it down, I’m selling a tile to Martin right now…
Chris R
When you first were doing the calendar murals, you were using the days of that month.
Kerri B
To raise money.
Chris R
As your sponsor recognition area. This time, people can sponsor their favorite musician, is that right?
Kerri B
They can. There’s different categories, different levels of sponsorship. Of course Willie and Waylon and Bob Wills, they’re way up there. there the big legendary ones. But we have levels of 5,000, 1,000, and 500. What we came up with at the board meeting last night is we decided there’s so many people and so many people that want to see their favorite musician up there that we’re painting about 40-45 people, and that’s a lot for Style.
Chris R
It’s going to be loud, I think.
Kerri B
We’re going to do this beautiful scroll at the bottom, beside the yellow rose tiles and that scroll is going to be the your two-cents worth.
Chris R
The names. Extra names, more people.
Kerri B
And if you want your guy up there, it’s going to cost you $250 to put his name up there. The excess money that we raise will go towards the maintenance of the other murals. We have to take care of our murals.
Chris R
We want to see these other names. I want to see, who do you, listener, who do you love that’s not on this list and let’s get them on that scroll.
John D
The Flaco Jimenez tile is sold, Martin just bought that tile. So he’s off the list. We have Bob Wills, Don Henley, the Flatlanders, Gary Clark.
Kerri B
Tanya Tucker.
John D
Tanya Tucker, Lyle Lovett.
Chris R
If someone wants to sponsor a musician and wants to find out – right now, what’s the best way to find who’s available to sponsor?
Kerri B
Well as our web designer, it will be on our website soon. They can go to artwalkalpine.com and see the design, the ideas and the musicians.
Chris R
That will be soon but not right now. Probably the best thing is to email info@artwalkalpine.com and that would get to Kerri and she can fill you in immediately. Hopefully within a few days of this broadcast, this podcast going out, we’ll have that information up. That’s really exciting. I want to tell folks who aren’t familiar with the businesses in Alpine, which we’re all talking about. If you’re headed from that original mural corner of 5th and Holland and you just look at the railroad tracks, you’re going to see that wall because Printco is on the corner of 5th street and Murphy. You’re going to see on the railroad tracks side of Murphy, you’ve got a parking lots that’s a railroad property and you’ve got Printco. It’s that tan stucco wall that is just waiting to have all these musicians on it.
Kerri B
We’re excited. Printco has donated a certain amount of money towards the xeroscaping ,we’re going to xeroscape there. There’s a propane tank that we’re going to paint in disguise with some boulders and a tree, but there’s going to be some benches and it’s going to be very welcoming. We met with a gentleman who’s going to help us design a xeroscaped park area.
John D
You’ll can sit in a seat and look at the stage.
Kerri B
We have to have Willie Nelson front and center where you can actually stand at the mural and have your photo with him.
Chris R
So the next thing we need to get Joe to do is the soundtrack from the buildling, right? So we have to be hearing this music overlooking hte mural. We’ll see. Joe Esparza, note. Anyway, that’s very exciting. What kind of timeframe are you looking at for completion?
Kerri B
Of course no grass grows under our feet. We’re going to have it dedicated on July 30 during Viva Big Bend. Viva Big Bend plans on closing Murphy street and doing a big bbq and a musical thing Friday night, so we’re going to dedicate it Friday night and Saturday morning we’re going to have our Texas music 5k fun run.
Chris R
Alright so that’s going to be the Viva Big Bend weekend you’ll also have the 5k.
Kerri B
That’s right. Style will be in town probably that weekend and we’ll get started and it’ll be painted in July.
Chris R
Wonderful, we can’t wait to see that. Right after that it seems like we’re rolling into a nother smaller project.
Kerri B
Yes actually, another project that we’re getting behind is Ellen Ruggia’s designed the desert fiesta mural that’s going to be in that alleyway on…what is the name of that – who owns that building?
Chris R
David Landman owns the building. Actually there’s a lot of courtyards that face on a little plaza that connects to that alley so there’s two walls of that courtyard. So folks know, the design it’s a desert willow tree with insects pollinating the flowers.
Kerri B
It’s fantastic.
John D
It’s beautiful and it’s totally different than any of the murals around. It’s very nice.
Kerri B
We’re very excited about helping to raise money and make sure this project comes to life.
Chris R
Full disclosure: Ellen Ruggia, the artist, if my wife. The Artwalk board has very graciously agreed to shepherd the fundraising so that when folks make a donation, they can give it to the nonprofit and be assured that the money will be used properly.
Kerri B
It’s tax deductible and it’s going to be another beautiful creation for that area.
Chris R
Fantastic, well this is lots of exciting things happening. These two projects are far from teh only ones that’s going on. That should give folks an idea of the landscape of painted walls around downtown.
John D
We have Amanda Calhoun, who’s doing our tiles, and she’s doing these beautiful ceramic yellow roses. Shoutout to her because they’re really nice
Chris R
Lets’ talk about Amanda Calhoun just for a second.
John D
Let’s do.
Chris R
Because she’s a ceramic artist and her work, you can find it at the Gallery on the Square. she is assists with the running of that gallery for the Big Bend Arts Council. Her clay work, she does mostly flat pieces that are kind of retro looking, almost like a postcard. I understand she did some really cool awards for the 5k.
Kerri B
Our 5k’s so far she’s done all our awards. The next 5k, the Texas Music 5k Fun Run, are cassettes. They are miniature clay cassettes.
Chris R
They are so cute.
Kerri B
The first 50 people that cross the finish line will get one of these. Then we have first, second, and third. John was saying she’s actually designing these yellow roses of Texas that are going to be handmade in three different sizes because of the three different levels of sponsorship.
Chris R
They’ll have the names of the musicians right?
Kerri B
the musician and the sponsor.
Chris R
And the sponsor. Fantastic. Well, they’re going to be beautiful because her work is so good. It’s so charming and well done.
Kerri B
Yes and if you choose Selena, she is a 5k level sponsor, she gets a white rose.
Chris R
Ah the only one.
Kerri B
The only one.
John D
Because that was her logo or something.
Chris R
Right, wonderful. Well thank you two so much for coming to talk to me today, thank you for this ongoing work for our community. Know, please, that we value you so much.
Kerri B
We have other murals in the works.
John D
Can I do one more thing?
Chris R
Of course, John.
John D
Every year we donate a scholarship to a young student graduating from Alpine High School that’s going onto school and a couple of days ago we have the scholarship to Brady Crump.
Chris R
Congratulations Brady!
John D
Very, very nice kid and we’re happy to do that.
Chris R
Wonderful. Just a teaser that we’ll get you back to talk about the actual Artwalk event in November as we get closer. Thanks you all for the time you’ve given us today, we’re very grateful.
Thank you for joining us for Heart of the Big Bend every other week. You can get more information about Heart of the Big Bend at visitalpinetx.com/podcast or search for Heart of the Big Bend on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast apps. And for all of you guys, listening to us on KALP/KVLF radio in Alpine, we’ll see you in two Fridays.
Outro
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