In the Winter of 2018, I moved to Denver to work on my undergraduate degree in art history. As any good newcomer does, I began exploring the different neighborhoods of my new mountain-side city. Rather quickly, I became enamored with the abundance of murals enlivening an area now known as the Santa Fe Arts District and Denver’s Westside neighborhood. Mesoamerican symbols embedded within the murals initially caught my attention because of my own background in art history of the ancient Americas, opening my eyes to a rich history of visual storytelling created by artists in Denver’s Chicano/a/x community.

At the time, I was unaware of the strong role of Denver creatives during El Movimiento, or the Chicano movements of the 1960s and 70s. It was only after I started working with the Chicano Murals of Colorado Project just three years later, that I began to understand the significance of these murals in Denver (and Colorado at large), their legacy and impact, as well as the fact that they have become endangered amid rampant gentrification and urban renewal projects in the Rocky Mountain region.

Many of the muralists I discuss held prominent places in this social movement. Many of them had their own studios, but what each of these artists share is the desire to connect with the communities they are part of, often inviting the public to participate in the creation of the murals that told their stories. This is what inspired the consideration of the sites where murals were painted as studios in and of themselves.

Purpose

This project explores three of Denver’s Chicano murals and the creative process of making them as characteristic of artist studios as they were originally intended. The built and historical context surrounding these works further embeds their significance as spaces of collaboration, critique, and storytelling. This project was influenced by my previous work with the Chicano Murals of Colorado Project, whose founder Lucha Martinez de Luna, I am forever grateful for allowing me to be a part of the preservation of such important histories. The murals discussed in this project can be found in further detail in the database of the Chicano Murals of Colorado website. All research interpreting murals as public examples of artist studios involving the compiling of primary source newspapers from archives, government websites, and documentaries is my own.

Each of the boxes below features a unique section of research related to Chicano murals in Denver as artist studios in the streets. I recommend proceeding through each category in order of appearance, but please feel at liberty to refer back to any of the previous sections at any time. Full acknowledgments and a compilation of resources for further research will appear at the end.

Significance

While many of the artists mentioned had or currently have their own studio practices, it felt important to emphasize projects that served a public good and allowed groups of people to coalesce around shared humanistic concerns. The implication of reframing the sites where murals are made as open artist studios relates to their current state of preservation and the fight to protect these works from being white washed, sometimes by the very entities which commissioned them. Raising the street to the level of the artist studio, and bringing the fundamental characterization of the artist studio to the street, allows for the broader community of Denver to have a part in their historic existence, thus justifying their protection.

Much of the work of researching and writing about murals is scarcely found in the traditional academic environments of peer-reviewed articles and edited volumes. In fact, much of the work is done through conversations with community members, visiting local community centers and art exhibitions, as well as toiling through locally produced newspaper articles. My recommendation to anyone interested in community-based murals and their protection is to first serve the community in which these important works reside through volunteering with organizations passionate about this issue. It is so often that these, often small but mighty, organizations that much of the legwork of preservation takes place.