Painting Wyoming’s Chicano culture

By PETER BAUMANN / lbedit9@laramieboomerang.com • Sunday, May 02, 2010

For artist Stevon Lucero, unveiling the three-panel mural — Parades Hablanda — at the Alice Hardie Stevens Center was like coming full circle.

Before being commissioned by La Radio Montanesa: Voz de La Gente KOCA 93.5 to paint the mural, the last similar work he had done was nearly 10 years ago. Because of health and his age, Lucero hadn’t expected to create another mural — they’re time consuming and physically demanding of the artist. But after being approached by Connie Coca, whom he had grown up with in Laramie as a child and young adult, and being informed of the project’s mission to artistically symbolize Chicano and Chicana history in Wyoming, he realized it was a project he had to do.

“It was Connie. It was Laramie. It was sort of like the last hurrah, so I took it on for that purpose,” Lucero explained.

The mural — Parades Hablando, Walls that Speak — is not only a representation of Latin American history in Wyoming, but its also a representation of spirituality, of the future and of what Lucero refers to as “philosophical art.” The murals contain true people and places, past and present. Albany County Clerk Jackie Gonzalez is depicted in the mural, as are many notable Laramie and Wyoming landmarks.

But the mural also has deep roots in Chicano folklore. The weeping woman, La Llorona, and Macuilli Ollin, a symbol from the Aztec calendar are both depicted, as are many other images from Latin American culture and heritage. The Virgin of Guadalupe is in the center middle mural.

La Radio Montanesa: Voz de La Gente Board of Directors President and University of Wyoming professor Cecelia Aragon said that many parts of the mural personally resonated with her.

“The recognition of family, community working the fields… My family, my mother in particular, was a migrant worker, so that panel really spoke to me; it’s about Chicanos having respect for the land,” Aragon said.

Lucero explained that he created a mural tied together not specifically by story, but by hope.

“The murals that you’ll see are more of a portrait of hope as opposed to a narrative, but it also has a narrative as well,” Lucero told those gathered before the unveiling. “It’s constructed in a way that the mural can be put together in one piece or it can be separated. For me, this’ll probably be the last mural project that I do. I’m getting old… But I’ll tell you all of the sudden coming back to Laramie, this is like coming full-circle.”

Early in his artistic career, Lucero left Laramie for Denver. But he told audience members that the place of the unveiling — the Alice Hardie Stevens Center — and the name of the piece — translated into Walls that Speak — were too serendipitous to be mere coincidence.

“Every now and then something happens and we go ‘Oh, look there’s this dangling end over here and this dangling end over there,’ and all of the sudden they come together and you’re here in this moment. And something extraordinary takes place, which maybe doesn’t mean anything to you, but has a lot to do with what’s going on inside my head,” Lucero said.

Nearly 40 years ago to the day in April of 1970, Lucero explained that he, being somewhat of a “hippie” back then, decided to go for a walk up to the UW campus from his house on First Street. Making his way up Ivinson, he passed what was then the condemned and decrepit Ivinson Mansion.

“This is one of those non-ordinary reality experiences but believe me, it happened,” Lucero said. “I started hearing weeping. I started hearing a woman crying… I stop and look, and I’m looking at the house and I started to realize the house was crying.”

Lucero added that the experience might have been his first encounter with metarealism, a term that he alone developed and by which he defines much of his art. And much in the same way that the mural he painted speaks spiritually to those who see it, the walls of Ivinson Mansion spoke to him those 40 years ago.

Aragon explained that a weeping woman has been part of Chicano folklore for years.

“He heard the voice of La Llorona, the weeping woman,” Aragon said. “That’s a big part of our cultural psyche, that she exists.”

For Lucero, the experience was just one of many he’s had in his life that has shown there is more power in the spiritual than the existential.

“There’s magic in the world. Faith is the key that opens that door, and if you’re paying attention you will feel, you will hear that spirit and it will tell you the truth,” Lucero said.

Through Paredes Hablando, Lucero is opening those doors, both spiritual and real, to Wyoming’s historic Chicano culture.

Although the mural will be traveling throughout the state for different exhibits, including a May 13 engagement in Torrington, it will be consistently on display at the Lincoln Community Center.