Time For Change
Do you feel the need to flee your surroundings to live in the world you want to live in? What if we can make more inclusive homes right where we are?
“You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to show it to an audience that hasn’t seen it before.”
-Alice Ophelia The Publish Press
This quote from Alice Ophelia is one that I believe many artists and creators deal with everyday, especially if you live in a conservative state. Living in Nebraska, I encounter this challenge daily. Here, and in many places of the Midwest, art is based around the lush green and yellow fields of crops, tractors, and hay. Other popular art includes quilts, wood working, and scenes depicting town and sports pride. You may have noticed as you move closer to cities like Des Moines, Omaha, or Sioux Falls you start to see the transition into art that is created in a melting pot. Art with bright colors, new concepts, nudity, and with a voice. You don’t typically get that if you’re in a small town and that’s where artists, like myself, and maybe you too, can become the greatest societal outcasts.
Currently I live in a town with just over 1,000 people. It’s in the lovely corner of Northeast Nebraska. I paint murals for a living and spend the rest of my time trying to break into the comic book industry. Both aspects of my career tell me I need to move to a coast if I’m ever gonna make a living doing what I love. Or I should get a “real job”. But that's not exactly the truth. More and more of the youth have left these small towns to move out and seek opportunities in cities or other states. It leaves small towns trying to figure out a “thing” to make their town more bearable to live in. And that’s where I saw the opportunity for change.
I’ve painted over twenty murals across ten towns, so far. Each of these in Nebraska, many of them in small communities. I started when I was nineteen, fresh out of high school and headed to college to study studio arts. In that transition, I decided to start painting murals. I got inspired by several muralists and graffiti artists in Europe and thought, “yeah I can do that, it shouldn't be that hard to get work.” I was wrong. My first few murals were from family friends who paid too little and it took too long. But it was an experience nonetheless. I found myself stuck. How do I paint on walls and still get paid? How do I make a name for myself doing something that isn’t that popular in the Midwest? My answer was found in being rejected over and over again.
I made change in the towns around me by being annoying. I cold called economic developments and anyone who had a blank wall that would be perfect for a mural. I got in touch with them two or three times to either get pointed in a new direction or to get the job. It worked well. Well enough that I started to get bigger projects and anchor myself in new communities and I introduced new ways of creating art.
I started to use spray paint, like the artists I admired. On one of my first projects with a spray can, I was painting a mural in broad daylight next to a post office dressed in white attire the kind meant to defy any criminal intent. Despite these precautions, the police were called, and it became the running joke of the community during my time painting with them. Having a small town support you while you’re spray painting a building is something I didn’t think was possible. With each mural, I have community members come up and ask about what I’m doing because they are curious. The moment that happens, I invite them to paint. I let them graffiti the wall. They may never have the chance in their lifetime to be deviant and spray paint a public building like me. Why not make it a community event?
The thing about being an artist in the Midwest is that you have to continue to introduce new ideas to the community you’re living in. When there is push back, you may have inspired someone else to follow in your footsteps and that makes creating art 100% worth it. We just need to remember that, at the end of the day, we put our best foot forward and we are doing what many others have a hard time doing: being themselves and being creative.
Gabriel Perez is a Midwestern muralist and comic artist, living in Nebraska. His work can be seen throughout Nebraska and at events such as comic cons throughout the region.
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