01__West Texas or Bust

This blog is a continuation of the "Fresco or Bust" blog, which I wrote in Arizona.

I decided to try fresco again in West Texas, after developing the process in Tucson. The goal this time is to create a proper fresco without cracks, by painting over 3 to 5 coats of lime plaster. In Arizona we only painted over one coat of lime -- the “intonaco.”

Currently I am in Lubbock, helping Ken prepare a fresco panel. However, tonight I will go to San Angelo, to grind fresco pigments into water at the Chicken Farm Art Center. More slaked lime is waiting for us in a storage unit I rented in Midland, Texas. I set this up last December, after packing all the fresco materials left at the Sculpture Resource Center into my Honda Fit, and driving from Tucson to Texas:



Ken has been inspired since viewing the Vatican Fresco exhibition in Lubbock during 2002. I like to think that we are following the tradition of Peter Hurd, who painted the big rotunda fresco in Holden Hall, on the campus of Texas Tech University:



A bust by Glenna Goodacre in front of the Peter Hurd fresco on the Texas Tech campus:


Self portrait of Peter Hurd, plus artist Tom Lea and musicologist John Lomax, at the bottom of the fresco:


WPA fresco mural by Peter Hurd, in the old post office in Big Spring, Texas:


Peter Hurd fresco at the post office in Alamogordo, New Mexico:


Other side of the outdoor Alamogordo fresco:


There is also a Peter Hurd fresco at Los Poblanos near Albuquerque, not far from the huge new fresco at the National Hipanic Cultural Center which Frederico Vigil just finished. Before driving to Lubbock, I checked out Vigil's fresco in the torreon, and also Stephen Michael Bennett's fresco class in nearby Corrales:


Beautiful fresco done by Aimee Martuccio, in Stephen Michael Bennett's workshop:


One of Stephen Michael Bennett's frescoes at Blades Bistro, in Placitas, New Mexico:


I also found inspiration online, from the concurrent Fresco Project at Western Kentucky University. We are working more casually than the university, but I expect to be surprised, and get something nice from our effort.