from the Waco Tribune
May 25, 2019
Scenes From South Waco
Waco history goes on as thick as the
paint on the southwest wall of Diversified Product Development, 1001
Webster Ave., and that’s the point.The white wall facing South 11th Street is being turned into a 300-foot mural packed with images from the history of South Waco.
There
is baseball icon Babe Ruth, batting at Katy Park as a boy watches
through a fence; horse racing at Gurley Park; bales of the cotton that
fueled Waco’s economy; a farmer selling watermelons; a jet from the
James Connally Air Force Base, whose servicemen populated downtown on
weekend leave; the Cotton Palace; a locomotive engine; the Waco
Suspension Bridge; A.J. Moore High School; a Greyhound Lines bus; a Mrs.
Baird’s bakery; silos; Dr Pepper; Pure Milk Co; and, from the side
where it did the most damage, the 1953 Waco tornado and the city blocks
it shattered in its path.
What
is billed as the longest mural in Waco is taking color and form this
month, four years after Melissa Skrhak suggested the idea to her father,
Ray Fritel, owner of Diversified, a baseball’s throw away from where
the mural’s Katy Park once stood.
Lead
artists Chesley Smith, 74, and Ira Watkins, 78, estimate there is a
month or so of painting ahead before the wall is finished, depending on
the number of volunteers who show up to help out.
Central
Texas Artist Collective’s Steve and Angie Veracruz are coordinating
painting sessions through the group’s Facebook page, with sessions
starting at 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. May heat is a consideration for the
split shifts, and so is an afternoon sun that makes a white wall
blinding to painters.
Fritel
said the project started when he was planning to repaint the wall, and
Melissa suggested a mural on part of the wall would be a fun idea. With
Cultural Arts of Waco President Doreen Ravenscroft, Melissa talked with
Kansas muralist Dave Loewenstein, who led a mural project for the East
Waco Library in 2013. Early
discussions imagined the Diversified mural as a similar way to
highlight South Waco history. When initial costs seemed too high,
Ravenscroft suggested using Waco artists Smith and the San
Francisco-based Watkins, who ended up designing the mural.
Over time, the project grew to cover the entire wall.
“You
know how it is with Doreen,” Fritel said. “Things don’t get smaller.
They only get bigger, and that’s certainly a compliment. We went along
with Doreen and the artists when they said ‘Let’s do the whole wall.’” For Fritel, it’s a thank you of sorts for the city he and his family moved to in the 1980s.
“My wife and I feel it’s good to give something back to the community,” he said.
Fritel
and his company handled the wall cleaning and preparation — no small
task, Ravenscroft said — and funding arrived in grants from Creative
Waco and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
The
two artists bring a considerable amount of Waco history themselves as
well as several murals around town. Smith continues as a professional
artist after retiring from a career teaching art at Paul Quinn College,
Waco Independent School District and, for a brief while, the school at
the Texas State Prison for Women in Gatesville. He has had work
exhibited across the state and has sold paintings to buyers in Canada
and Europe. He has a one-man show planned for July at the Carleen Bright
Arboretum in Woodway.
“I
stayed with it,” Smith said. “It’s challenging and one of those things
that doesn’t give you an immediate payback, but I’m still standing.”
Smith limits his mural
commissions to no more than two a year because of the time and work
involved. In 2005, he completed three “Color Us Proud” murals seen on
Elm Street. His “Black Pride” is on a side of Marilyn’s Gift Gallery,
with “Each One Reach One Teach One” and “Peace” nearby.
Seeing his work in public still perks him up.
“It’s exciting to drive by and see your art and know it’s going to be there for a while,” he said.
While
art education shapes much of Smith’s work and career, Watkins largely
was self-taught, studying and imitating an acquaintance’s chalk drawings
as a boy, then proceeding to line drawing from newspaper comics. One
of 12 siblings growing up in Waco, he ran away from home as a teen,
staying with a sister in Dallas, then moving later to San Francisco,
where his folk style found buyers. For a decade, he worked for the state
encouraging disabled children and adults to try art.
“You’ve got to have the confidence that someone who likes it will see it someday,” Watkins said. “Art is art.”
Even with decades of painting experience, he still relies on trial and error to get it right.
“When it flows, it’s all right. When it doesn’t, I wrassle with it, wrassle with it, wrassle with it,” he said. Like
Smith, Watkins has several murals in Waco. He painted fishing and
eating scenes on the exterior of the former Easy Fisherman Restaurant on
Taylor Street and did the painting of Martin Luther King Jr. in Martin
Luther King Jr. Park on a concrete pier that once supported an
interurban rail line. He drew on pictures from “The History of Waco” for some of the images in the mural. Others came from his boyhood experience.
“I
sold watermelons off the back of a wagon for Mr. Gus, Gus Brinkley,” he
said. “I picked cotton when I was young. To me, it was an adventure.” Watkins
also climbed the cables of the Waco Suspension Bridge with a friend on a
dare and shined shoes of Connally Air Force Base servicemen at the
Greyhound bus station downtown. The
mural is divided into panels, with outlines marked for some and others
still blank. Watkins and Smith are doing much of the detail work so far,
with volunteers employed to fill in areas of solid color. It’s filling in, but it’s work to fill in a neighborhood’s history.
“When I go home, I’m tired,” Smith said.
