by Caroline Keane
Photo: George Galvez’s Mural at the Alano Club, GEORGEOUS MURALS.
Over the past two years, the walls of downtown Olympia have become much more colorful. Murals and graffiti covered boarded up shops. This shift began when the pandemic hit and the Black Lives Matter uprising followed. This past summer, a mural was created on the wall of Alano Club, where Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon meetings take place. The mural depicts a path leading to a bright and luminous sun. The two sides around the path depict very different worlds in stark contrast to one another. The left side shows green and abundant lands, with beings radiating light, moving with joy. The opposite side shows a scorched Earth, with beings devoid of light, suffering. The inference can be made that the mural depicts the many existential crises before us that ask on a deep level do we take the path of life, emptiness, or a higher path?
George Galvez is a member of the art team of the Thurston County Climate Action Team. They’ve painted several murals in Olympia. He started learning how to paint graffiti at 12 years old. We spoke about some of his inspirations for the mural and his own path that led him to that work.
After getting fired from a job he loved, George chose to focus on art. The Alano Club, where he attends meetings, asked him for the mural and he gave it to them as a gift, using a GoFundme and personal funds to cover the cost of paint.
CPJ: Why was this mural painted on the Alano building-what does that mean to you?
George: I go to AA, that’s what I do, it’s the only thing that’s worked to keep me from drinking. Their formula is very spiritual. I’ve looked into it. It’s way more inclusive than I thought at first.
CPJ: How did this mural come about, what was your process?
George: This whole process happened because I started the mural with a specific sketch. It was one path and the other path and a path in the middle that leads to like I like to call it the aim of religion using the method of science. I feel like there is a common aim to get in union with their god, goddess, superior being, a creator, but it’s that union, to be close to that…The sun to me is, every religion can probably agree, the sun is greater than them and it’s a power greater than them, if the sun isn’t here I cease to exist, right? It’s got way more power than I do. It happened at the lowest point, I saw the vision of the mural and started sketching it out and I looked at it and it, I was up 24 hours. There was a lot of symbolism. The part that is devoid of color, is supposed to be a representation and there’s this other side, this stark contrast, there’s reduction of color. That side was a very personal side…it was finished 9 times [the sketches]. At one point it had a pit full of people and these people were trying to escape and they couldn’t, and there was spirits coming out. I might have looked a little crazy to people…I’ve been sober for four years. It was tough. It was totally worth it.
CPJ: What have been some of your inspirations as an artist or artists you want to pay homage to?
George: I love the murals growing up in East LA. They were typically, one could say, Mexican art, they had Aztec pyramids and snakes, things I wasn’t being taught, but was curious about. I remember dancing, seeing the murals and it would make me dance. Then I’d see billboards all over the city, and think dude I didn’t ask for that billboard to be here. When I saw graffiti writers go up on billboards and make them pretty with colors I was like that is what I want. There was a lot of artists back then, an artist named Saber is probably one of the most influential for me back then. Knowing what they did for me to be able to stand on a corner and paint, I thank them.
CPJ: What words or advice would you like to share with anyone contemplating their own path or hoping to make their way as an artist?
George: I’ve been so fortunate in my life. I feel like I’ve been a golden child in a way, where opportunities just like here you go, I’ve starved, I’ve had more paint than I had food, I cried at that wall. I would go there, ride my bike at night, look at it, question whether I was doing the right thing and I always knew-it’s like that courage you know, that breaking point. The more people told me I was crazy, the more I knew in my heart that I was doing the right thing. Having a clear connection with your heart is important, that’s always led me. I just started to connect with me- having compassion for myself dude, you’re okay man. You’re totally okay. I know the world is telling you that you need to be a fucking mouse, but you are like so okay. I didn’t have that all the time, so it’s tough. Man, just go for it. Do it.
CPJ: What is the role of art in social change?
George: When there’s no words anymore when it reaches that plateau of this is as much as we can scream, there’s going to be a picture that’s going to explain it or one photograph…By art I think it’s more of a wide open variable than something more static, I paint or I take pictures….I’m starting to be a little more hopeful, not just for my future, but for everybody’s. I think the world needs more artists to come out of that construct. They need to be pulled out.
His art can be found at Georgeousmurals.net
