More Public Art In A Desert Town

On the first day of November 2012, we took a brief walking tour of San Angelo’s public art…

Then as now, San Angelo sits at the northeastern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.  A little more than 100,000 people call the city and surrounding county home.  They are approximately two-thirds of the population of the Concho Valley whose hard and dry terrain covers an area greater than the square miles of the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined…

Hemphill-Wells Building: Remo Scardigli

It is an area heavily invested in the “old” American West’s economy of ranching, hard scrabble farming, oil and gas.  Hemphill-Wells-- a San Angelo department store whose building was later transformed into the county library-- hired celebrated sculptor Remo Scardigli to honor this heritage and placed the completed project on its western wall in 1972.  Scardigli had lived along the central California coastline in his younger days and had been part of the “bohemian” crowd surrounding novelist John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts.  It was a circle that included scandalous storyteller Henry Miller and cerebral mythologist Joseph Campbell.  Readers who have visited the town of Carmel may have seen another of Scardigli’s works, a redwood carving of Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar who established missions in California’s days under Spanish rule…

Salmon Competition: Texas Flora by Joe Barrington

Salmon Competition: Windswept by Ben Woitena

The ranching heritage of San Angelo and other aspects of area life form the basis for a series of murals sponsored by a non-profit organization called Historic Murals of San Angelo.  At this writing, the group’s latest project (Native American life) is in the process of being completed by muralist Stylle Read whose other work includes historically accurate depictions of ranch life, the military presence in the area, and the work of western writer Elmer Kelton.  Another muralist, Crystal Goodman, has painted wall scenes showing the impact of the railroad and downtown San Angelo as it appeared in the very early Twentieth Century…

Crystal Goodman: Chadbourne Street circa 1908

Melodie McDonald, Designer: Mosaic Car

Goodman is one of the artists associated with The Old Chicken Farm Art Center founded in 1971 by Roger Allen.  With twenty artist studios and a Bed and Breakfast for visitors to southwest Texas on its three acre site, the Chicken Farm is a major force in the regional art scene.  On the first Saturday of each month, the compound hosts an open-to-the-public exhibition of artists at work and blacksmithing as local musicians provide background entertainment…

Roger Allen: Decorative Plates, Old Chicken Farm Art Center

The most easily noticed local celebration of the arts may be the juried Richard and Pam Salmon Sculpture Competition with its nearly yearlong exhibit at the Sunken Garden Park in the center of the city.  Seeking to win the prize this year is Uruguay-born and USA educated Ana Lazovsky, who lives now in Israel.  Previous competitors include San Angelo sculptor Anthony Fuentez...

Salmon Competition: Copacabana Wave by
Ana Lazovsky

Salmon Competition: Cuddling Fish aka Hot Lips
by Bobby Peiser

Fuentez, incidentally, created one of San Angelo’s most easily missed works of public art-- a whimsical sculpture of a cat burglar quartet scaling the sides of an insurance company’s offices.  The wire figures are almost invisible to a pedestrian walking past a shaded patio between the walls of a bank and those of the insurance company.  Many thousands of people have strolled by, unaware of the “crime” in progress…

Richard Fuentez: Cat Burglar Quartet

The almost-invisible public art theme is repeated elsewhere in the city.  Unless one knows where to look, it’s all too easy to walk past the entrance to downtown Paintbrush Alley where mostly anonymous artists gave new life to the back side of old buildings.  Most of the work was completed in 2005 but a visitor suspects the creativity behind the paintings is merely dormant, perhaps taking a long nap...

Paintbrush Alley: June 1937 (Artist Unknown)

Paintbrush Alley: Movie Memories (Artist Unknown)



Paintbrush Alley: Saint Joseph (Artist Unknown)

Elsewhere on the streets of the city at the edge of the desert sit mermaids and stand fiberglass sheep.  There are several statues of Pearl to be found downtown.  Local folklore has it that the lovely half-human half-fish makes her home somewhere along the banks of the Concho River where she supervises the mussels who produce rare purple freshwater pearls endemic to the region…

Pearl (Artist Unknown)

A plethora of fiberglass sheep dot the San Angelo cityscape, the visitor notices... 

The answer of why there are so many of them is simple.  Historically, the city holds a prominent place in the business of shearing sheep.  A local businesswoman, musing on San Angelo’s historic claim to being the Wool Capital of the World and the Miss Wool pageant that honored this status, put her senses of humor and whimsy to good creative use and saw a downtown filled with painted fiberglass sheep grazing the sidewalks…

Standing on a corner in the old part of the city, I think Brenda Gunter had a good idea.  I see a mural honoring the spirit of the warrior, a store celebrating the hippie ideal with a bright pink peace sign, a fiberglass sheep paying homage to the hard work needed to survive life at the edge of the desert.  And I agree with her comments that San Angelo is the true capital of West Texas.  Where else, I ask myself, could these three things come together...

 

Fiberglass sheep, Military Heritage Mural by Stylle Read,
and Store

 

For more Public Art in San Angelo:            

http://lrnarts-lrnarts.blogspot.com/2012/11/public-art-in-desert-town-clear-skies.html

 

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http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

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CREDITS

Note: All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia, without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: All photographs by Louis R Nugent.  Research for topics covered in this essay consists primarily of information from readily available sources such as Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica except as noted: Remo Scardigli as sculptor of Hemphill-Wells artwork, information on the Salmon Competition, and Richard Fuentez’ sculptures from San Angelo Standard Times columns by Rick Smith; information on Remo Scardigli as friend of John Steinbeck from With Steinbeck In The Sea of Cortez by Sparky Ennea and Audry Lynch (Sand River Press, 1991).