Wow. It’s been a busy couple weeks which included prepping like a big dog for the Mountain Film festival installation, going to Telluride at 9000 feet to do the installation with the occasional small piece going up in Flagstaff. Shout out to Brooklyn Street Art who’ve scheduled to run the story of the Telluride installation tomorrow. Good looking out Steve + Jaime.
mash up in flagstaff
Talking about corn and climate change. The text reads “The Diné (Navajo) word for sweet corn is naa dáá which is a large grain plant first domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mexico[1] about 10,000 years ago. Beginning about 2500 BC, the crop spread through much of the Americas.[6] The region developed a trade network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers and traders carried maize back to Europe and introduced it to other countries. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates.
And what is the future of maize and other crops in the southwest as the planet warms? The Southwest is the hottest and driest region in the United States, where the availability of water has defined its landscapes, history of human settlement, and modern economy. Severe and sustained drought will stress water sources, already over-utilized in many areas, forcing increasing competition among farmers, energy producers, urban dwellers, and plant and animal life for the region’s most precious resource. Agriculture, a mainstay of the regional and national economies, faces uncertainty and change. The Southwest produces more than half of the nation’s high-value specialty crops, including certain vegetables, fruits, and nuts. The severity of future impacts will depend upon the complex interaction of pests, water supply, reduced chilling periods, and more rapid changes in the seasonal timing of crop development due to projected warming and extreme events.”
Jamison + his dog at the Boiler Room Studio in Flagstaff
Klee + Princess in the Mission, San Francisco outside Galería de la Raza coinciding with their “For the People” show. The full backstory on this piece “What we do to the mountain we do to ourselves” will appear on the blog Brooklyn Street Art tomorrow. And how can you not love Brooklyn Street Art when they love you more everyday?
For example, I was told last summer by an older man from the community of Bitter Springs that the buffalo/bear power piece (so named because the buffalo and bear are power symbols within the culture and have examples of manmade power sources on their backs – power lines, a windmill and the smoke stacks of the Navajo Generating Station), was considered evil. 
“It’s seen as unnatural, like homosexuality.” I’d already been ruminating on what it means to attempt to introduce an art form not common to the traditional community of the reservation and how best to do this. I wasn’t following the model of public art community of holding community meetings to explain the project or the work and to get their consent although I was getting the approval of wall owners to create art in that space. I figured I’d have this conversation with Alexis once he arrived.
I talked with him about the philosophy of jazz and the act of creating in the moment inspired by one’s surroundings. 
I actually told him this before he came and asked that he not come with a preconceived idea of what he was going to paint. He said this was the first time he’d been asked to approach painting this way. A year later when I spent 3 weeks with him in Perth, Australia at a street art festival in 2014 he thanked me for pushing him out of his comfort zone saying his practice now is to wait until he gets to a place before deciding what he’s going to paint.
Worried that the Anglo proprietor of the trading post might have an issue with his hybrid figure I asked Alexis what she thought of the piece. He said she liked it. Once the piece was complete I stopped by and talked with the proprietor about the billboard. Her name is Chris. She became emotional talking about the painting because she felt Alexis had been guided by a spirit and the piece spoke directly to her in that she had a sculpture in the store someone had given to her of a raven. She identified the raven as her power animal.
jetsonorama 