There was a time when Lucky Garcia, 15, and Armando Granillo, 14, left their school’s back door each day with the rest of their classmates to an alleyway plastered with gang graffiti.
Now, thanks to an innovative program, they and the rest of those attending ACE Community Challenge Charter School in the La Alma neighborhood of Denver pass by an art mural the students designed.
The spray-painted image of a huge tree now covers a back wall of their school. One side of the tree is dead. Gravestones fill that landscape, under a sky of dark clouds. The other side of the tree thrives with green foliage. A proud man dressed in a graduation gown walks on that side.
Now the gangs that once used to throw up their insignias with black spray paint leave the alley alone.
“They don’t touch our walls anymore,” Garcia said recently.
The “Project Off the Wall” art murals were pushed by Denver Councilwoman Judy Montero and others. Montero thought filling the neighborhoods of her west-side council district with art would help reduce the proliferating graffiti that had become such a nuisance.
“Through the murals, we are trying to get them to redirect behavior away from destructive graffiti,” she said. “We want them to see something that is beautiful and is urban art that will have recognition in the community.”
Montero modeled the concept on a similar art mural she helped push in north Denver in the 1980s in the Sunnyside neighborhood when she worked for a youth program.
“That mural is still at that nonprofit,” she said. “It has been graffitied only once with some hate-crime stuff, and the community cleaned all that up.”
For the La Alma program, Montero raised $10,000. She hired local graffiti artists to submit examples of their work to neighborhood groups, which then selected the artists they wanted to paint the murals.
A mural went up at the Swansea Recreation Center. Another is on a wall at the Aztlan Recreation Center.
Delton “Send” Demarest is putting the finishing touches on a mural at the Sun Valley Youth Center showing the faces of children forming a circle around a window. Rays of sunshine emanate from the window. The image of a cross is incorporated into the mural, a concept community church members asked Demarest to incorporate instead of the peace sign he originally had contemplated.
Plans are underway for another mural to be painted in Sunken Gardens Park across from West High School.
The protective black metal shields that once covered the front windows of the ACE Community Challenge Charter School, 948 Santa Fe Drive, have been transformed into works of art that blend with the surrounding Santa Fe Arts District.
Local graffiti artists Chris “Pheud” Bernal and Delfino “Fienz” Rodriguez painted the concepts the school’s students designed. Bernal also painted the alley wall, finishing a concept the students started.
A proud student body thrives at the school, which has become a refuge of sorts for many students who have had discipline problems elsewhere. The students poured themselves into the murals, teachers say.
“It was really from their soul,” said Kimberly Goodwin, an aide to Montero who helped coordinate the murals. “They were very sincere for such hardened kids.”
The murals gave Steve Ortegon, a student adviser, something positive to consider.
“There is a sense of pride,” he said. “A lot of the kids participated in the murals. They keep asking, ‘When are we going to do it again. When are we going to do it again.’ ”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
