1

A Thesis Presented to the

Pacific Northwest College of Art

Peoples of the Columbia

In Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements

for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree

Esteban Camacho Steffensen

2010

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Approved by

Avantika Bawa

Research and Writing Faculty

Arvie Smith Barry Sanders

Thesis Mentors

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Table of Contents

List if Illustrations……………………………………………………………..5

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………...……..6

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………….7

Introduction …………………………………………………………………..8

Creating a Mural Model …………………………………………………..….9

Historical Narrative ………………………………………………………….13

Artistic Influences ………………………………………………………..…..20

The Emerging Ecozoic Era ……………………………………………….…..22

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………..….27

List of Works………………………………………………………………....29

Works Cited………………………………………………………………….30

Bibliography………………………………………………………………….31

Appendices…………………………………………………………………...33

Artist Statement…………………………………………………………...…34

Proposal……………………………………………………………………...35

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,

Oregon. Page 11.

Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,

Oregon. Page 14.

Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

Page 15.

Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.

Portland, Oregon. Page 17.

Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

Page 19.

Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.

Page 25.

Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.

Page 27.

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Acknowledgements

To the people of the Columbia River, its magnificent history and

sacred water.

The School of Social Work, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, our

team of muralists, artists, friends and my entire family.

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Abstract

My art represents nature yet imbedded in it is a social dialogue,

which is at the heart of political and community art. This project is a

commission for the School of Social Work at Portland State University

in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest College of Art. I will

investigate how a public mural project interacts with the atmosphere of

an austere building, transforming the interior space and empowering

the people in that space. This social collaboration has enabled me to

do outreach, to explore, and to discover new forms of public art as an

ideal medium for community building.

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Introduction

My thesis project attempts to forge a dialogue between local

Pacific Northwest history and present social, economic, and

environmental concerns. The mural will demonstrate an optimistic view

of our local history, highlighting groups of people working in nature,

and creating an inspirational space for the education of social work.

This project gave me the opportunity to create an historic and

figurative mural with a team of college art students for the state in a

brand new eco-building.

I paint large murals that aim to beautify spaces and create

atmospheres over existing urban walls. With mural art, I intend to

reinsert the natural world, visually, into our urban societies. One of my

goals in producing murals is to bring images of sustainability and hope

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to communities around the world through the education of art, and

local ecosystems by representing flora, fauna and human history in a

contemporary context. I feel that being in nature allows people to relax

and I hope to create that effect and opportunity visually.

The overarching motif in this mural is the Columbia River that

ties all the mural panels and all of us to our local environment. Water is

a crucial element in my paintings because it is the foundation of life on

our planet. It is also evocative of global concerns related to the sea,

climate change, and ecological balance. I think it’s important to create

art that shows awareness of our river, which is the force that gives us

clean water, food, energy and habitat. In this paper I will argue that

collaborative mural projects are incentives for communities to unite,

learn, and engage in social and environmental action.

Creating a Mural Model

I wanted to organize a community project between the Pacific

Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and Portland State University (PSU) to

strengthen the connection of our art communities and institutions in

Portland. This project involved the organization and recruitment of

college students to participate in a cross-campus public mural. The

physical workspace is in the School of Social Work at PSU, so I invited

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both communities to participate. Over 25 students responded to my

call for artists. Students from PNCA and PSU and many local artists

collaborated throughout the full execution of this project, successfully

interweaving these communities. Teamwork and collaboration became

a crucial and challenging element of this endeavor. Through

fundraising and lobbying I created a fund to administrate and give

stipends to the volunteers, creating a scenario where students needed

to show their portfolio, bill me and in turn be compensated for their

work and help. This altruistic approach to art education and business

interested many people to become involved. Some students would

shadow and follow me throughout the entire process. At first we

created a practice mural that was 18’ x 9’ in my studio at PNCA. This

gave us a space to create our team of muralists and integrate our

different styles and skills. It also gave me a chance to learn more about

the other students, such as their own reasons and interests in

collaborating with me on a commissioned mural.

Collaboration goes beyond art making and intersects social

practice, entrepreneurship, partnership, education, and an endurance

of negotiation to manifest ambitious community projects. Being the

mural director made me realize that a social artist should be able to

complement his profession and communicate with many other kinds of

professionals to enable artistic events to take place in a wider context.

Environmental artists can become catalysts in the environmental

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movement. They spark ideas in the public’s imagination with their art.

In turn, artists reach new dimensions by collaborating with politicians,

biologists, community activist, etc. I am advocating for artists to take a

more official and responsible role to empower and connect all the

different communities in our local areas and the world. As an artist, I

want to break away from the paradigm that we are at the margins of

society. Now more than ever, artists must be at the center of society,

helping different communities to better visualize our interrelationships.

Working with diverse communities: the State, universities,

institutions, students and local artists, forced me to create images for

these people to coherently visualize their ideas and mine. I was able to

undertake this giant project with out losing my artistic and ambitious

dream thanks to the support of everyone. The painted mural is only a

sliver of a vast social and political process in public art, which

comprehensively outweighs the final product. This process has great

potential to empower a larger audience.

Mural painting does not serve only a decorative capacity,

but an educational as well. By education I do not mean in a

descriptive sense, portraying cinema-like the suffering or

progress of humanity, but as to the plastic forms and

treatments in the art of painting. Since many workers,

school children, or patients in hospitals have little of no

opportunity to visit museums, mural painting could and

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would open up new vistas to their neglected knowledge of

a far to popularized Art. (Gorky 15)

I began collaborating with the surface of the wall by finding

relationships between the architecture, social work, history, present

and urgent environmental issues. This site-specific project is reflective

of the gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

building certification; this standard has encouraged me to use recycled

paint and eco-conscious painting practices, emphasized in the careful

use of paint materials and a thoughtful use of brushes to ensure their

longevity. During working hours, conversations with the public served

as feedback and this exchange developed into an interdisciplinary art

form.

Figure 1. Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,

Oregon.

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As lead artist, peer and colleague of my student collaborators I

assessed their skill, level of interest, and professionalism in order to

manage and create a unified picture. This process served as a way for

me to network and find potential artists to hire and collaborate for

future projects. Instead of being selective I invited all people who

wanted to participate allowing for a full range of skills and

personalities. We tried several approaches to collaborative painting.

These experiments tested my skills in managing and leading a group.

It challenged me to create painting sessions where I would begin

painting in an area and my artist friends would then take over and

imitate what I was doing. In other cases we would fill large base colors,

paint with transparent glazes or create smooth transitions from light to

darker colors. Smaller groups of people worked more effectively than

larger ones because then I had to be directing rather than painting.

The students’ help enabled me to execute the project much faster, and

their company and input also helped me to see new perspectives.

Students preferred specific tasks because the scale was intimidating

and our goal was to create an image that I had designed. I had hoped

that the students could express themselves artistically; however, this

mural was not about the aesthetics of collaboration, but a project

where other art students collaborated as workers and painters under

my direction.

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I also tried to give other young artists the chance to gain

confidence engaging with the professional art world. Through this

interdisciplinary activity, all participants were able to combine social

work, social justice, and environmentalism with their own art practices.

And the project helped create a new bridge between PSU and PNCA

where new relationships were formed between several distinct student

and professional groups, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed. I hope

that the project has opened the door for more inter-institutional art

projects between the two.

Historical Narrative

This mural commissioned for the School of Social Work is

significant for me because it merges so many disciplines, however the

stronger element in the mural reflects my ecological commitment,

which is also present in the design of the building. “This building was

built from the ground up with sustainability in mind. Its rain water

harvesting system, geothermal heating and cooling, elliptical workout

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machines that generate electricity, and much more earned Portland

State another Gold LEED certification.” (The New Rec Center)

The walls of the School of Social Work located on the sixth floor

of the new Academic Student and Recreation Center (ASRC) offer a

stunning panoramic window view of Northwest Portland. I created

images to function as windows into our historical past, which contrasts

with the view out the actual windows. The historical subject matter

represented in the mural stands in opposition to the contemporary

cityscape. This allows viewers to have an aesthetic relationship

standing between the past, the present and the future. I hope the

viewer will feel more deeply inspired and connected to both. The ASRC

is in the center of the PSU campus; it is also located on the busiest

transportation hub in Portland. We created self-portraits through the

historical figures as another way to interrelate our historical past with

our present lives.

Through various meetings with the mural committee, we

progressively narrowed the focus of the theme: from social work, to

immigration, to the impact of the land, then to Oregon’s history of

social work. After receiving input from the mural committee I

determined the paintings would depict the local history of the Vanport

floods, the damming and flooding of Celilo Falls. The panels are

metaphorical of social work, representing different groups and

communities in juxtaposition and harmony.

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Going with and against the flow of the Columbia River, the mural

is divided into four panels, which reflect powerful events of social

injustice in Oregon’s history, as well as the diverse ecological habitats

where these events took place. The parallel between these disastrous

events is the social displacement of communities, which is also

occurred as a result of the social engineering of the Columbia River.

Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,

Oregon.

The Vanport Flood of 1948 was the worst flood in Portland’s

history, represented in the first panel. As a symbol, it represents the

largest influx of minorities into Portland, changing its social structure

from primarily Caucasian to our current multiethnic population. This

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event corresponds to the segregation of African Americans after

Portland’s worst flood, the Vanport Flood. It inundated downtown and

left over 20,000 people homeless in North Portland. This site was also

the birthplace of Portland State University, which was inundated and

relocated in Southwest Portland. The panel symbolizes how people

come together to help each other in the event of a natural disaster.

This image tells a story of the Vanport Floods, but also alludes to the

more current disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in

Haiti.

The Vanport flood forced the government to industrialize the

Columbia River to protect the city from future floodings and to

generate hydroelectricity and develop industry. The dam is painted as

a symbol of conflict between our different lifestyles and political

priorities. The dynamic features of the mural allow viewers to move

from panel to panel as the mural crosses the hallway and passes

through several doorways.

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Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

The second panel is about the damming and flooding of Celilo

Falls in 1957. The construction of dams on the Columbia River

displaced many Native American communities and destroyed

important natural habitats for flora and fauna. The construction of the

Dalles Dam is Oregon’s most controversial dam project, which reflects

the economic and political marginalization of Native Americans during

the 20th century. Celilo is an ancient convergence point where the

eastern desert and the western forest meet, where animals, plants,

and cultures traditionally came together. Wyam (Celilo Falls) was the

most important fishery and point of contact between Indians in all

directions (Yakima, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Chinook and the Confederate

Tribes of Warm Springs) from as far as Alaska, Idaho, California and all

of Oregon.

On March 10, 1957, the Native American community of Celilo

and the Northwest region looked on as a rising Lake Celilo rapidly

silenced the waterfalls, submerged fishing platforms, rock formations

and consumed their village, thus extinguishing one of the oldest

continuously inhabited communities on the North American continent

(11,000 years old). In this panel the sky is painted in a surrealist way.

The clouds transform into the reflection of the undersurface of the

water, suggesting an underwater landscape. This gives the illusion that

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we are looking up at the sky and up at the surface of the water. I did

this because all these platforms, rock formations and cultures are now

submerged. The three ghostly figures are painted in the palette of the

cliffs and petroglyphs. They represent the spirits of the chiefs of the

lost traditions that once lived or came to trade here. Celilo, once the

Niagara Falls of the Columbia River, has vanished now with them.

The federal government considered the eradication of Indian

culture and political autonomy as a positive outcome of the damming

Celilo Falls (Roberts 12). This new historical mural will give a voice to

repressed peoples who don’t have a voice in the media, but can still

have one in public art. My representation of these undervalued

cultures and displaced members of society gives these people a voice

in contemporary art. It also invites all viewers to learn more about our

regional heritage.

The central image in this panel is a mother with her fist in the

water, holding a child on her lap while sitting on a fishing platform. This

iconic figure has a number of symbolic meanings. One of the traditions

at Celilo, at the beginning of Salmon season, was to take the first fish

caught and hold a ceremony in honor and respect of the animal.

Children were present and the animal was offered back to the river.

This figure is three times larger than life size and it’s my

representation of a contemporary Madonna and Child protector of the

workers, both European and Native American. She also represents

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Mother Nature, creator and protector of future generations. I painted

her fist as a symbol of human strength and the struggle for survival.

Her fist in the water represents the shared and continued struggle for

survival that not only confronts Native Americans, Salmon, but also all

of humanity.

Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.

Portland, Oregon.

My hope is that people will discover and learn more from

traditional, ancient cultures. I am interested in painting the Native

American communities because I want to focus on how they once

coexisted harmoniously, and sustained the natural environment to

ensure the renewal of abundance, especially the seasonal return of the

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spawning salmon. The Columbia River formed our region. Therefore it

ties together the panels with dynamic gestures of water in movement.

The third panel takes place in Central Oregon and it’s metaphorical of

social work. Four children work together constructing a cairn mirroring

the cliffs in the background, asserting the connection between nature

and humanity. It is about the importance of youth and the playful spirit

of children acting in harmony with the natural environment. This panel

was painted with primarily earth tones, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna and

Burnt Umber and I was thinking about the relationship between the

color of our skin, the color of the Earth, and the relationship between

humanity and nature.

The fourth panel juxtaposes two extremely different ways of

harvesting wood. I painted the first pioneers cutting down the oldest

and largest Douglass Firs and Red Cedars, reinterpreted from an

historical photograph taken by Darius Kinsey in 1898. He documented

the transformation and the extermination of our primary forests. I

wanted to contrast this unsustainable system of forestry, so embedded

in modern Oregon culture, with an ancient Native American way to

harvest cedar bark and lumber planks using simple tools and sheer

bodily strength. The Red Cedar has an astonishing straight grain

allowing the wood to be easily wedged out in vertical planks. Bark can

be made into baskets and it even provided food. This process created

giant scars, but did not circumscribe the trunk, allowing the tree to

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heal itself. The great trees continued living, perpetually gifting wood to

the tribes who practiced this technique. I believe these are admirable

traditions, which provide inspiring examples of sustainable harvesting.

My research has assisted me to understand some of the

antagonistic relationships among different social groups and historical

perspectives, where modern progress and human security are in

conflict with the environmental, social, and economic well being in the

Northwest. The juxtaposed groups of people I painted hint at our need

to find a way to better coexist and unite as one people living still in the

bounty of the Columbia River.

Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

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Artistic Influences

My work has a dynamic and a classical composition, focusing on

the landscape, and the amalgamation of figures, united with an organic

sense of movement. My motivation to paint in the way comes from my

first hand experience of seeing Italian Renaissance murals when I

traveled in Florence, Italy in 2006. During that trip I was fortunate to

see the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli. Their work

inspired me to understand the scale of mural art from some its most

powerful masters. Their work represents pure devotion to and mastery

of light, architectural space and natural landscape. Some of the fresco

paintings were distorted, designed to be viewed from specific angles,

and the quality ranged from impressively realistic to very loose, where

one could appreciate the artist’s hand and style from 600 years ago.

For this mural I have treated the composition in this classical

tradition using naturalistic linear perspective and atmospheric

perspective creating an impacting view of the ecosystems of North

Portland, the Columbia Gorge, Central Oregon and the Cascade Range.

These classical influences enlighten viewers to consider the intrinsic

and ideal connection to our natural environment.

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The figure composition is also classical but in some ways it’s a

pastiche of Postmodernism, WPA, Mexican, Impressionism and

scientific illustrations. This array allows for a larger balance and

historical content. I intended the treatment of the figures to be

expressive and in the realist language of the Mexican and American

muralists, which deals more specifically with political and social issues

for a public audience. I feel it is time to revive specific components of

the Mexican, WPA and Harlem Muralist Movement of the early to mid

20th century in order to promote economic and ecological

sustainability through a new 21st century mural language. The social

realists of Mexico and the United States such as Diego Rivera, José

Clemente Orozco, Thomas Hart Benton, Aaron Douglas, and the

contemporary Chicana artist form California, Judy Baca strongly

influenced my work. This figurative artwork has allowed me to connect

to my Central American heritage of mural painting. This perspective is

aggressive and political, being an important structure in many

revolutions. It’s important to reinforce this American heritage as

culturally powerful in response to the cultural stereotype of Latino

labor workers in Oregon. As a Costa Rican American and muralist, I

addressed the history of the region to connect the audience to the

ancient Mayan, Aztec, and Native American line of artistry. Even the

Mexican muralists used classical approaches such as chiaroscuro and

main light sources, yet they were pioneers in using these picture-

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making resources to paint peasants and ancient aboriginal motifs. I

feel that these influences resonate in my work and I am able to glean

from the technical achievements of Renaissance art, and the Mexican

muralists, while applying imagery from our regional Native American

culture and history in this mural. These languages are intended to

provoke the viewer to experience the “other”, reversing our primary

culture: English/American. This fusion between these traditions and

visual languages suits didactic imagery for historical, social, and

controversial topics.

The Mexican Muralists’ developed a dynamic language of

painting; it took the best from local indigenous histories and combined

those with renaissance realism and modern dynamic and multi-

perspective compositions. Their realistic and expressive representation

of figures speaks to our human condition, and suffering in Latin

America, which is core to my heritage and many in the Portland

community. The Mexican muralists turned revolutionary propaganda

into one of the most powerful and significant achievements in the 20th

century art. In a film about David Alfaro Siqueiros, we hear his words

from his Manifesto for artists of America in 1921: “We repudiate what

we call easel painting and all art of an ultra intellectual vein as

aristocratic, and we extol monumental art expression as being part of

public benefit.”

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This call to make monumental art was the spark that started the

great Mexican and American Mural Renaissance; the content was

historical and revolutionary. The artists gathered and reproduced new

interpretations of ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec art; they also

painted Mexican workers, peasants, and leaders in their class

struggles. My hope is to have recreated a similar fusion of indigenous

and contemporary imagery with a political impact, exalting our local

ethnic native and migratory history to address the current

environmental crisis.

Murals for the Emerging Ecozoic Era

In light of the current global crisis of global warming, which has

the potential to make the planet inhospitable to human life, we must

reinvent a new idea and goal for humanity, other than those currently

in place. And we must find the means to continue to create common

cause across the increasingly violent cultural divides. A recent concept,

that is not yet widely known, could assist in this effort. It is the idea of

establishing an emerging Ecozoic era. The Ecozoic idea represents a

new promise that the Earth’s future can still be a place of mutually

enhancing relationships between humans and the larger community of

life systems. (Eco means house and zoic means life. So Ecozoic means

house of life.)

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These various mural art movements have encouraged me to

begin to think of ways to jumpstart a new mural renaissance or an

artistic revolution for the “Ecozoic era”. The term Ecozoic, coined by

the historian Thomas Berry, names a new era for humanity to find a

new creative and life-affirming balance with the natural world.  This era

provides a new conceptual framework, which encourages and supports

our choices to move towards carbon neutrality and social generosity.

It has the potential to give people hope because it names a period of

time that is potentially bigger than that implied by global warming.

In this project, large community images or murals could create a

new a sense of community identity because the scale of a mural is

integral to the public realm and allows them to engage with their

community members. Murals help to build a sense of community

because they are often done by groups of people and for the local

community to have a voice in the larger world.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to be part of

something bigger than themselves which will help the planet and

humanity.  But they need more encouragement and less finger

pointing. Martin Palmer, of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation,

asserts that environmentalists have been using tactics of blame and

scarcity in their well-intentioned efforts to get people to change. Many

environmentalists recognize that we have come to the end of the

modern industrial era. It is essentially over, because if it is continued, it

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is likely we will destroy the life sustaining potential of the planet.

Therefore if we are mature enough to recognize our situation, we must

also recognize that our role in relationship to the planet must change.

Art and graphic images are an important element in non-violent social

change and artistic revolution. I am trying to create murals to awaken

hope to the possibilities of creating an Ecozoic era. I want to support

communities around the world to experience positive education,

collaboration, and a new evolutionary view of artists in society. I will to

continue painting murals and giving communities the initiative to

engage in grassroots and humanistic events through these projects.

The key will be to integrate this term as an Earth manifesto and to

socially and economically reintegrate our selves into new and ancient

sustainable patterns.

When the mural Peoples of the Colombia River was finished I

noticed the visual connection between the roof garden on the fifth floor

and the forest painted in the mural, the green instantaneously

connected the outside and the inside, further reinserting the natural

world.

We have too many walls and concrete surfaces that repress us.

“There can be no mural without a wall. [From old Latin: murus "wall"]

This simple condition of mural making greatly impacts its planning,

process, and reception, and largely distinguishes it from other forms of

public art” (Lohman 1). The art and the community transform the

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environment. Murals have a significant role in creating community and

engaging the public, whether they are private commissions,

commercial work, trompe l’oeil or faux, murals for restaurants, but

especially inspiring are public murals in schools, streets, public areas,

and museums. Murals also create an intellectual space because fine

art, landscape and social imagery combined are intense ingredients for

conversations in communal social change.

Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.

When I am painting a mural the wall texture, smell, lighting and

the people become my home and family in a sense. In the context of

architecture, wayfinding is a term referring to the paths we choose

within the built environment. Murals help people find our way around

because they alter space in a very unique way. People make sense of

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these spaces; imbue them with significance and familiarity.

Consequently murals transform spaces into places. For this new

building, the mural will help create a sense of community. The

audience is not only there to witness the finished object, but to learn

and observe its creation. A woman asked me: What is this about? And I

asked her: What do you get from it? She responded, “I feel it’s about

people coming together, unity. In this mural people are coming

together in a natural and a social disaster, from the premise of the

human community, our ability to link and stand together can stop the

flow of water”

Ethnographic research takes into account both tangible

and intangible factors and acknowledges that local people

have the most in-depth knowledge of local circumstances.

Respect [and] willingness to be open minded about local

interpretations of acts and behaviors, and an

understanding that it takes a certain amount of time before

a community comes to trust and feel confident in the

[artists] ability to reflect their reality [in a mural]. (Lohman

1)

Murals engage individuals and groups to work towards designs,

preparatory work, paintings, drawings, research, meetings, events, and

field explorations. The desire to research history, science, interview

community members, elders and professors, the general public, and

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influential artists will eternally and continually echo in an artists work.

It is in this vast dialogue and learning process, where I find motivation

to continue making murals and collaborative art projects. The entire

world complements art just as art is the reflection of our entire world.

Since the end of the lawsuit when Clear-Channel sued the city

and banned murals, the nonprofit for Portland’s Mural Defense has

fought back and helped to create a city code that protects muralism in

Portland. The new code supports artists to undertake mural endeavors

again and now the city supports public art more than ever before. With

the current economic recession, art markets have been drowning. But

collaborative initiatives that link public art projects with various

institutions and funding organizations have the potential to persevere

in this difficult economic climate, while also providing artists with a

chance for political expression. Students graduating with art degrees

are far more successful if they have collaborative and networking skills

in addition to their artistic talents. In this vein I am looking to open

opportunities for emerging artists to collaborate with me on future

murals and as a way to give back to my local community.

Conclusion

Public murals and community art collaborations become focal

points in urban settings, transforming the environment in positive

ways. My responsibility has been to carefully research the local culture,

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history and environment pertinent to the location and goals of the

mural. My personal artwork is strongly based on realistic and

impressionistic depictions of flora and fauna, which I have researched

with biologists to provide accurate portrayals of ecosystems, albeit

with artistic license. I used collaboration, documentation and teamwork

to analyze and judge the success of the process. The work has been

assessed based on accuracy of the local environments, both the

natural ecosystems and the human history. The work represents two of

Oregon’s most significant instances of social injustice and links their

historical occurrence to current social challenges.

Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.

What is the role of a mural in creating a sense of community? To

draw parallels between pertinent subject matter and positive imagery,

since public art will articulate a message for many years to come.

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Consequently, I want the constituents’ experience to be positive and

self-reflective. In contemplating my work, I have received very positive

comments and believe that they will ignite and motivate communities

to change and improve society.  I hope these projects will inspire a

more holistic humanitarian connection to nature because they depict

humanity both positively and critically. I hope the mural with continue

to encourage the public to think about past and current challenges of

our times and to seek a new dynamic balance of how our society

interacts with the natural world and the many cultures with whom we

share the planet.

List of Works

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Figure 1 Collaborators: Jenny McCord and Elena Tardif. 2010. Portland,

Oregon.

Figure 2. Camacho, Esteban. Vanport (Panel 1). 2010. Portland,

Oregon.

Figure 3. Camacho, Esteban.Celilo (Panel 2). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

Figure 4. Camacho, Esteban. Children (Detail of Panel 3). 2010.

Portland, Oregon.

Figure 5. Camacho, Esteban. Cedar (Panel 4). 2010. Portland, Oregon.

Figure 6. Camacho, Esteban. Painting the mural. Portland, Oregon.

Figure 7. Camacho, Esteban. Mural Opening. 2010. Portland, Oregon.

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Works Cited

Gorky, Arshile. Murals Without Walls: Arshile Gorky’s Aviation Murals

Rediscovered.

Newwark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1978. Print.

Lohman, Jonathan "The walls speak: Murals and memory in urban

Philadelphia.” University

of Pennsylvania: ProQuest. 202. Pag. Web. 1 Jan 2010

Palmer, Martin. Interview with Mary Colwell. Recorded video for the

Alliance of Religions

and Conservation. Web. 24 Mar. 2010.

Roberts, Wilma. “Celilo Falls: Remembering Thunder.” Wasco County

Historical. May

2007: 10-20. Print.

Tajonar, Hector. Siqueiros: Artist and Warrior. Mexico: Arte Multimedia

S.A., 1998. Film

“The New Rec Center.” pdx.edu. Portland State University , n.d. Web. 1

April

2010.

35

Bibliography

Boime, Albert. The Magisterial Gaze. Washington: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1991.

Finkelpearl, Tom. Dialogues in Public Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

MIT-Press, 2000.

Folgarait, Leonard. Mural painting and the social Revolution in Mexico,

1920-1940. USA:

Cambrige University Press, 1998.

Gorky, Arshile. Murals Without Walls: Arshile Gorky’s Aviation Murals

Rediscovered.

Newwark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1978. Print.

Hehingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left. London: Yale University Press,

2002.

36

Hurlburt, Laurance P. The Mexican Muralists in the United States.

Albuquerque: University

of New Mexico Press, 1989.

Iosifidis, Kiriakos. Mural Art: Murals on huge public surfaces around the

world from Graffiti

to Trompe l’oeil. China: Publikat Verlags-und Handels GmbH &

Co. 2008

Lacey, Marc. “Cultural Riches Turn to Rubble in Haiti Quake.” The New

York Times

January 24, 2010 International/Americas. Web. 8 Feb 2010.

Lohman, Jonathan "The walls speak: Murals and memory in urban

Philadelphia.” University

of Pennsylvania: ProQuest. 202. Pag. Web. 1 Jan 2010.

Ludwig, Coy. Maxfield Parrish. New York: Watson-Gultill Publications,

1973.

Macmurray, Eloise. The Washington Park Fences Project. Portland,

Oregon: Tri-Met and

the Regional Arts and Culture Council, 1995.

Marling, Karal Ann. Wall-to-Wall America. USA: University of Minnesota,

1982.

Matilsky, Barbara. Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists

Interpretations and Solutions.

New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 1992.

37

McKay, Marylin J. A National Soul Canadian Mural Painting 1860s-

1930s. Montreal:

McGills-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

Norwood, Susan. Diego Rivera and his murals. Yale-New Heaven

Teachers Institute. 2005.

11/14/05. www.yale.edu/ynntil/.

O’Brian, John and Peter White. Beyond Wilderness. Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s University

Press, 2007.

Roberts, Wilma. “Celilo Falls: Remembering Thunder.” Wasco County

Historical. May

2007: 10-20. Print

Rolston, Bill. Politics and Painting. USA: Fairleigh Dickinson University

Press, 1984.

Staikkidis, K. “Learning Outside the Box: How Mayan Pedagogy Informs

a Community

University partnership.” Art Education Reston Vol 62 Issue 1: 20-

24. Web. 2009.

Skovgaard, Dale. “Memories of the 1948 Vanport Flood.”  Oregon

Historical Quarterly . (Spring 2007) Web. 1 Feb 2010.

Staikkidis, K. “Learning Outside the Box: How Mayan Pedagogy Informs

a Community

38

University partnership.” Art Education Reston Vol 62 Issue 1

pages 20-24, 2009.

Tajonar, Hector. Siqueiros: Artist and Warrior. Mexico: Arte Multimedia

S.A., 1998. Film.

“The New Rec Center.” pdx.edu. Portland State University , n.d. Web. 1

April

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New York: Smithmark

Publishers, 1996.

Appendices

39

Appendix 1: Artist Statement

My thesis project attempts to forge a dialogue between local

Pacific Northwest history and present social, economic, and

environmental concerns. The mural will demonstrate an optimistic view

of our local history, highlighting groups of people working in nature,

and creating an inspirational space for the education of social work.

This project gave me the opportunity to create an historic and

figurative mural with a team of college art students for the state in a

brand new eco-building.

40

I paint large murals that aim to beautify spaces and create

atmospheres over existing urban walls. With mural art, I intend to

reinsert the natural world, visually, into our urban societies. One of my

goals in producing murals is to bring images of sustainability and hope

to communities around the world through the education of art, and

local ecosystems by representing flora, fauna and human history in a

contemporary context. I feel that being in nature allows people to relax

and I hope to create that effect and opportunity visually.

The overarching motif in this mural is the Columbia River that

ties all the mural panels and all of us to our local environment. Water is

a crucial element in my paintings because it is the foundation of life on

our planet. It is also evocative of global concerns related to the sea,

climate change, and ecological balance. I think it’s important to create

art that shows awareness of our river, which is the force that gives us

clean water, food, energy and habitat. In this paper I will argue that

collaborative mural projects are incentives for communities to unite,

learn, and engage in social and environmental action.

Appendix 2: Proposal

Northwest Rights

41

I will be painting and leading a mural for the School of Social

Work at Portland State University (PSU) on social and ecological

consciousness. The mural will depict the local history of the Vanport

Floods and Celilo Falls. The Vanport Floods of 1948 corresponds to the

segregation of African Americans and other minorities, but also a

turnover and renovation for Portland’s new multicultural position. The

industrialization of the Northwest, specifically the damming of Celilo

Falls in 1957 is a stark symbol of Native American economic and

political marginalization during the century. The parallel between these

disastrous events is the social displacement of communities, which is

the result of social engineering around the Columbia River with severe

economic, social and environmental consequences. My intention is to

recreate a fusion of indigenous and contemporary imagery with a

political impact that contrasts with our urban landscape.

The space is an interior 130-foot long wall on the sixth floor of

the new PSU Social Work facility. These hallway walls face a panoramic

window view of Northwest Portland. The historical subject matter will

contrast with this contemporary scene. Below on the fifth floor is an

exterior plaza and eco-roof with native plants. This site-specific project

is reflective of this new building with a gold LEED certification, which

encourages me to use recycled paint and eco-conscious painting

practices. Students from PNCA, the Native American Center and the

School of Social Work from PSU can collaborate in the execution of the

42

mural as a way to make this an interdisciplinary community project.

The time-based process of the creation of the mural will be

documented using video and photography. The physical mural will be

done primarily with recycled acrylic paint on the wall space at the

School of Social Work during the beginning of the Spring Semester.

The social realists of Mexico and the United States such as Diego

Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood

strongly influence my work. Their visual language best suits didactic

imagery for historical, social and controversial topics. The Mexican

muralists turned revolutionary propaganda into one of the most

powerful and significant achievements in the 20th century art. David

Alfaro Siqueiros wrote these words in his Manifesto for artists of

America in 1921: We repudiate what we call easel painting and all art

of an ultra intellectual vein as aristocratic, and we extol monumental

art expression as being part of public benefit. (Tajonar, 1)

This call to make monumental art was the spark that started the

Great Mexican and American Mural Renaissance. The content was

historical and revolutionary. The artists gathered and reproduced new

interpretations of ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec art; they also

painted Mexican workers, peasants, and leaders in their class

struggles. My hope is to recreate a similar fusion of indigenous and

contemporary imagery with a political impact. But I will exalt our local

ethnic native and migratory history and current environmental

43

consequences. As viewers walk though this public work I hope it will

trigger and inspire social and environmental thought.

Vanport, established in 1942 was the largest housing project in

the US for wartime ship-workers at the Kaiser Shipyards. This

temporary city was located on flood plains in North Portland and had

grown to be Oregon's second largest city with the highest African

American population in the state. On Memorial Day May 30, 1948, a

railroad dike made of landfill burst; the floodwaters of the Columbia

inundated the city of Vanport killing 15 and leaving nearly 17,000

people homeless (Skovgaard, 1). Although Portland was recognized for

trying to rescue both white and black populations equitably,

segregation patterns continued to persist. The Vanport Floods made

officials aware that nature needed to be tamed by mankind’s progress

to achieve manifest destiny. This was reason for the construction of

many dams, which would produce energy, enable navigation and

irrigation for farmlands but also prevent future floodings.

I am interested in painting the Native American communities that

once coexisted harmoniously and sustained the natural environment to

ensure the renewal of abundance, especially the seasonal return of the

spawning salmon, the nusook. Wyam (Celilo Falls) was the most

important fishery and point of contact between Indians of all directions

(Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Chinook and Warm Springs). It was a

convention point where the eastern desert and the western forest met,

44

where animals, plants, and people interchanged. The communities of

Native Americans living at Celilo comprised one of the oldest

continuously inhabited communities on the North American continent

(11,000 years old.)

On March 10, 1957, hundreds of observers looked on as a rising

Lake Celilo rapidly silenced the falls, submerged fishing platforms, and

consumed the village of Celilo, ending an age-old existence for those

who lived there. The federal government considered the eradication of

Indian culture and political autonomy as a positive outcome for

damming Celilo Falls (Roberts, 12).

Perhaps the most challenging part of this mural is linking

sustainable care of the Earth with the sustainable care of communities.

Social work strives to protect and care for different ethnic and minority

groups in our society. Some of these groups are children, veterans,

seniors and ethnic minorities. My continuing research will assist me in

understanding these antagonistic perspectives, where modern

progress and human safety are in conflict with the environmental,

social, and economic well being in the Northwest.

Public murals and community art collaborations become focal

points in urban settings, transforming the environment in positive

ways. My responsibility has been to carefully research the local culture,

history and environment pertinent to the location of the mural. These

processes overlap my artistic goals. My personal artwork is strongly

45

based on realistic and impressionistic flora and fauna depictions, which

are researched with biologists to provide accurate portrayals of

ecosystems. This is my first opportunity to create an historic mural that

strives to inspire the public to take notice of its cultural legacies as

they apply to the current and urgent need for our culture to make the

shift towards sustainability. My responsibility will be to draw parallels

between the subject matter and to make the imagery positive, since

public art will emanate a message for many years to come.

Consequently, I want the constituents’ experience to be positive and

self-reflective.

In conclusion, the creation of the mural for the School of Social

Work will experiment with a social realist style and combine

environmental issues to create a dialogue between these issues and

concepts relevant to the current social and environmental crisis.

Through this project I will represent two of Oregon’s most important

historical events and link their significance to current challenges.

Hopefully I will inspire the public about the need for a new dynamic

balance for how our society interacts with the environment.

46