Residents of Denver’s Westwood community generally don’t look down on their neighbors, but that’s just what 34 of them are doing in Daniel Salazar’s latest piece of public art.
They’re the stars of a striking mural that the Highland resident created for Westwood Community Center.
Look up when you walk in the front door, and you’ll see an extraordinary skylight.
It’s a 5-by-5-foot rendering of our state Capitol’s wedding-cake rotunda. Gaze into its tiered depths, and staring back are Westwood residents, plus sundry whimsical flourishes.
Titled “Westwood Renaissance,” it will be dedicated at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the facility at 1000 S. Lowell Blvd.
“It’s a way of honoring and celebrating the people who live here,” Salazar said. “This is a working-class neighborhood. There’s not a lot of money, but there’s a real sense of community.”
Like most of Salazar’s work, the mural offers a bit of cheekiness. The artist also inserted figures from Renaissance frescoes; look close and you’ll spy a bare rump.
“It’s real hard to get nudity into public art these days, but I’ve got a cherub mooning everybody,” Salazar said. “People giggle when they spot it.”
Salazar was paid $15,000 by Denver’s 1 percent for Public Art Program, but the piece was also a labor of love — and a sort of homecoming.
He grew up nearby and had relatives in Westwood, bordered by Federal and Sheridan boulevards and Mississippi and Alameda avenues.
“I spent a big chunk of my childhood playing in Garfield Park,” said Salazar, a burly 55-year-old with maroon eyeglasses and iron-gray hair. “I have a real affinity for this neighborhood.”
So in the heart of his old stomping grounds, he has created art that people can look up to.
The subjects in “Westwood Renaissance” range from kids to nonagenarians. The youngsters were found at the local library, where Salazar set up his camera.
A plan to shoot the subjects in the rotunda was scrubbed when Salazar determined the “faces would just be dots.”
Salazar knows the names of most people in the work but not the most prominent faces — a quartet of children. “They just kind of mysteriously appeared and then disappeared. I don’t know who they are, but to me they really symbolize the neighborhood.”
After printing the photographs, he cut them out and arranged them in a montage. The finished image was transferred to transparent acetate mounted on opaque plastic glass.
The mural was installed in a skylight. It is illuminated by a Solatube that pipes in sunlight.
This isn’t Salazar’s first foray into public art. A 2002 work for the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building spurred controversy. “Grand Poobah and Office Fairy Cut Through Red Tape” showed a bureaucrat at his desk with a pixie and a few greenbacks.
Salazar had the effrontery to suggest that city hall sees the occasional back-room deal. Shocking. Does it snow here in winter too?
After the usual people made the usual noises, the dust settled and the artwork stayed.
“One thing I learned is that the average person distrusts government more than they fear art,” Salazar said.
William Porter writes twice a week. Reach him at 303-954-1977 or wporter@denverpost.com
