By Aeden Evenson-McDermott
As summer winds down, the Chroma Zone Mural & Art Festival is right around the corner for its sixth annual celebration.
The festival will be held Thursday, Sept. 18 – Saturday, Sept. 20, featuring free artist-led tours and several new wall murals located in the Creative Enterprise Zone district of south St. Anthony Park.
A commissioned LEGO mosaic mural by artist Brian Kelley will be displayed at events in September. A LEGO mosaic mural community workshop with Kelley is scheduled for Sept. 9 at the MODA Apartments, 760 Raymond Ave.
Nine artists have been working throughout the summer on new wall murals. They are: Mariela Ajras of Argentina, Denver-based muralist Anna Charney and seven Minnesota artists—Biafra Inc., Mike Davis, Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, Pablo Kalaka, Christina Vang and Andres Guzman.
Goldman, a Minneapolis-based muralist, uses bold colors and large portrait features to convey her work through a lens of being someone who deals with neurodivergence and sensory processing problems. Through her art and poetry, Goldman has spread her work across the globe including the U.S., Columbia and Cuba.
Her mural titled “Mimosa Pudica,” also known as the “sensitive plant,” which closes its leaves for self-protection when touched, is also an expression of those same efforts of self-protection, according to Goldman.
“This piece is inspired by the experience of sensory overwhelm, which is why the subject is wearing sunglasses (for bright lights), covering their ears (for loud sounds), and wearing gloves (for tactile overwhelm),” Goldman said. “I wanted to create a mural that was reflective of an experience I can speak to on a personal level, which is how this design was born.”
The Chroma Zone festival is run by CEZ, a city-recognized district and nonprofit whose mission is to inspire creative artists while advancing representation for artists of color.
So far, Chroma Zone has commissioned 72 artists to produce 62 murals including 75% by local artists, 77% by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists, and 50% by women/nonbinary artists.
Cadex Herrera, a multidisciplinary artist from Belize who now resides in White Bear Lake, is an arts teacher with the St. Paul Public School district who teaches traditional art disciplines such as drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics and illustration, as well as media arts, including photography and filmmaking. He expected to have his mural completed in August.
Herrera’s mural showcases Pok-a-tok, an ancient Maya ritual game played with a heavy rubber ball and involving hip, elbow and knee contact to propel the ball. It is believed to have had both sport and ritualistic significance and was to prevent war between antagonistic kingdoms. It was played by the Aztecs, the Mayans and many other Mesoamerican cultures.
“This (mural) for me is to honor my Mayan heritage and to honor our people,” Herrera said.
As of now the itinerary for the mural festival is:
Thursday, Sept. 18, will have a pre-show artist meet-and-greet at 6:30 p.m. before the moderated panel and Q&A session at 7 p.m. at Bang Brewing with food and beverages available for purchase.
Friday, Sept. 19, will feature an outdoor block party at 2370 W. Territorial Road with live music, a LEGO mural and art block activity with Brian Kelley, along with options to drive or walk for mural tours from 6 to 8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 20, will have bike and bus mural tours. The bike tours depart near Raymond Avenue and Charles Street at 9 a.m., while bus tours depart from the Creative Enterprise Zone in St. Paul from 1 to 4 p.m. Bus tours will be in English and Spanish.
Among the featured murals are those created by Mariela Ajras, an Argentine visual artist, muralist and an alum of Chroma Zone. She has explored contemporary topics over the course of her career and also examined the scope of art in public space through a gender perspective.
Ajras’s “Motherhood and Migration” mural, originally done in fall of 2019, expands with two new murals called “LET HER PAINT: From Subject to Authorship–Latin American Women Muralists.” This is the festival’s first triptych, a type of artwork that is divided into three sections and hinged together. She completed the work for these new murals in early June at the Wycliff building in St. Paul.
Aeden Evenson-McDermott is a journalism student at the University of Minnesota and is a freelance writer for the Bugle.
Photo caption: This untitled creation of Biafra Inc. at 2327 Wycliff St. is among several new wall murals being celebrated at this month’s Chroma Zone Mural & Art Festival. Photo courtesy of Creative Enterprise Zone.