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| Assistant Art Professor Carlos Fresquez's course on community murals led to the two paintings shown below. |
Carlos
Fresquez is an equal-opportunity painter. “I’ll paint with
anything—acrylic, oil, anything,” says Fresquez, an assistant professor
in Metro State’s Art Department. “Some painters have preference, one
over another. Me, I really don’t care. I’ll paint with tar, as long as
I’m painting.”
Paper, canvas and walls are fair game. In fact, art in public spaces
might just be the most exalted form of all. “I think it defines who we are
because if you look back to many ancient cultures—to Rome, to the
ancient Greeks, to the ancient Aztecs—what’s left is the ancient art,”
says Fresquez, whose New World surname traces back to 1617 in what’s
now Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.
With the power of public art in mind, this summer Fresquez
coordinated a community art project through a course titled, Community
Painting – The Mural. Twelve art students created two murals at
businesses in Fresquez’s former neighborhood in the oldest part of
Commerce City, once called Derby. Four hours a day, four days a week
for five weeks, the students worked through the competitive public art
process common to cities all over the United States.
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| "A Sense of Place" |
Divided
into teams, the students researched the area and developed mural ideas
then presented their ideas to the site owners for selection. “So for
some students, it was their idea,” Fresquez says. “For others, they had
to paint someone else’s idea. It showed them how to work with a group,
to deal with unity and to have a common goal. It taught them to
surrender concepts and go with what a community is asking for.”
"A Sense of Place” was composed on the wall of the Super Family Mart at 6454 E. 72nd Pl. “Wall of Women” was created on the Ace Jewelry building at 7290 Monaco St.
Oh, and just because the two paintings went on walls, don’t call them “graffiti,” Fresquez says.
Returning to Auraria
Fresquez
balances his classroom responsibilities, advising and committee work
with community service and time in his studio, where he’ll spend a
minimum of a few hours up to as many as 20 per week. A 1980 graduate of
Metro State, Fresquez, who earned his M.F.A from the University of
Colorado, returned to the College in 1989 to fill in for a painting
professor who was recovering from back surgery. “I really enjoyed it. I
had no idea of a teaching style or anything,” Fresquez says, “so I just
did the class, and they loved what I was doing.”
He ended up teaching part time at Metro State for 11 years before
taking an instructorship at the University of Colorado at Denver and
Health Sciences Center for four years. Metro State asked him back when
a full-time position opened up.
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| "Wall of Women" |
There’s something akin to an energy vortex around the Auraria
Campus, which keeps pulling Fresquez back. As a small child, he grew up
in the neighborhood and attended Saint Cajetan church. “Little did I
know being baptized in that church, going to church every Sunday, that
I’d be back,” he chuckles. “… I graduate, leave, then I’m invited to
teach, and I’m a block away from Saint Cajetan’s again.”
The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver selected Fresquez’s portable
mural entitled “City Blues” for the “Decades of Influence” exhibit at
Metro State's Center for Visual Art through Aug. 26. “It’s looking at
artists that have made an impact on the region—well, nationally and
internationally,” he explains. “I was fortunate to be selected.”
Married to his wife Lynn for 25 years, Fresquez has two children and
one very new grandson. His son just graduated from Kennedy High School
and will attend Metro State in the fall as a music student.
Fresquez is a musician himself, but only family and long-time
friends know it. An accomplished percussionist, he performed all over
the city in a rock-inspired “funk-jazz-Latin” band with his uncles in
the early 1970s. “We played in nightclubs when I was underage,” he adds.
When asked if the similar shape of drumsticks and paintbrushes might
have something to do with his creative spirit, Fresquez jokes, “I think
that’s exactly what it is. I try to paint with a beat.”
Click to view larger versions of the murals featured in this article.
