This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Art is not always thought of to be a group effort. However, in Longmont, the Firehouse Art Center, Casa de la Esperanza, Home Depot and Open Door Brewing have teamed up to make a large piece of art to be shared by all in the community.
Tim Porter, Longmont Observer writer of Discovering Longmont Breweries, recently wrote an article on Open Door Brewing Company. In that interview, Billy McDivitt mentioned the new art work hanging in the Open Door community room.
This piece of art has a story of its own.
It all began about a year ago when Open Door Brewing Company hosted their ribbon cutting ceremony. In attendance was Beryl Durazo, executive director of Firehouse Art Center. Durazo noticed the blank wall space at Open Door and saw an opportunity for the children who attend class at the Firehouse Art Center to showcase their work.
Durazo said, "I told Andy and Billy that our kids are always looking for mural projects, and they love dinosaurs. They have this beer called the Short Arm, which has a dinosaur on the can and Andy drew it. I brought up the idea of having the kids do an installation specific on-site, that they would work on off-site and have installed. And have the families have a chance to come in and check it out in this live community space that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to."
The idea was then presented to Mario Jose Olvera, a member artist, teacher and mentor at the Firehouse Art Center. Durazo states that, "Mario came up with the concept and carried out the execution for it and did a phenomenal job." Mario also teaches the Art Attack program, sponsored by Firehouse Art Center, at Casa de la Esperanza.
It was the children participating in the Art Attack program who took on the challenge of the 'Short Arm Collage'. "We met with Andy and Billy multiple times to make sure we were on the right track for what they were looking for. And it came out to be this collage type work. The kids actually did everything on the piece, Mario only did the outlining. The kids cut all of the dinosaurs out by hand," stated Durazo.
The art piece is inspired by the dinosaur on the can of the "Short Arm" beer, brewed at Open Door. The original can design was drawn by Andy Reidel, co-founder of Open Door Brewing Company. The children cut out dinosaur pictures from books that Olvera found at a thrift store and placed them to make up the dinosaur itself. They then painted the background design. The art itself was placed on doors to tie it back to Open Door Brewing Company.
Durazo added, "We don’t want to promote beer but we want to promote community, so anyone who has open community space we want to give the kids the opportunity to do a project around that. It was off-site, but the families did come for the grand unveiling of the art in the separate community room, that wasn’t in the tasting room. We made that distinction very clear."
"It was really great for the families, a lot of them didn’t speak English but they totally understood what was going on. Mario translated it all out for them, but it was all visual so they could see how happy their kids were. Their faces were super lit up and they were super happy," Alexis Crawford, marketing and fundraising coordinator for Firehouse Art Center, shared about the unveiling. She went on to explain the joy she saw on the children's faces as they pointed out to their family exactly which dinosaur they cut out and placed onto the art piece.
Open Door Brewing Company was thrilled to be a part of something that brings art to children. Billy shared, “to be able to take your parents some place and show them something you’ve done hanging on the walls of a business locally, is such a cool experience,” in discussing the opportunity that he was able to provide these children in addition to the project itself.
The project itself took around three months to complete, with the children devoting between 10-20 hours of their after school time to it. The dinosaurs alone took two weeks to cut out. The doors were donated by Home Depot (Longmont location) and the Firehouse Art Center paid Olvera for his time.
Several organizations came together to make this installation happen. Open Door provided a space and an idea for the art to be shared by the community. Home Depot donated the supplies to make the art come to life. And the pre-existing partnership between Firehouse Art Center and Casa de la Esperanza gave a group of undeserved youth a chance to do something positive, to create something beautiful and to showcase their artistic talents.
Durazo explains, "It’s all about partnerships at the end of the day, the reason that we have this program at Casa de la Esperanza is because we continue to provide that service for them, we really believe in providing arts and culture for those kiddos and for everyone in the community. We are always looking for new opportunities to do murals around town, at your business, wherever it might be, we’ll probably have a group that can fill that for you. We just want to give those kids the opportunity to express themselves in a professional manner that they probably wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Obviously schools give a lot of opportunities here locally, but as arts education funding dwindles, it’s so important that we strive to do these sorts of projects."
"People don’t realize how important it is that children get to showcase the things that they do. They really do enjoy doing that. We do live in this new era that portfolios are so important. So if these kids, at an early age, are able to see what they did and document that and show other people, then it gives them opportunities before they are normally given them," added Crawford.
If you would like to see this community driven art piece, visit Open Door Brewing, located at 2030 Ionosphere St., Longmont.
Firehouse Art Center, a nonprofit organization, welcomes both donations and volunteers. "Any support given to the program directly benefits those kids and being able to provide this amazing teacher. We are always looking for donations for the program to help support it," adds Durazo. To contact the Firehouse Art Center with your contributions visit their donation page by clicking here.
(Tim Porter and Macie May collaborated on the writing of this article.)
