Section: People
Do you know: Carlos Fresquez, assistant professor of art
Jul 25, 2006

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.

"A Sense of Place"

"A Sense of Place” was composed on the wall of the Super Family Mart at 6454 E. 72^nd Pl. “Wall of Women” was created on the Ace Jewelry building at 7290 Monaco St.

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.

"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.