- So in 2013 there was a fire downtown here in Ripon
and it destroyed a few of the store fronts.
After the fire, I wrote a grant.
I was trying to think of ways to acknowledge what happened.
And I wrote a grant to paint this mural.
And it was accepted.
And I talked with the city and got everyone on board.
The building, being held up by this tenuous scaffold,
and the building is in fact the first building in Ripon.
It's called the Long House.
What it was--
the settlers who moved to Ripon were from the east coast
and they moved out here to build a utopian society.
So they built this single house where everybody lived
and it lasted for some time
and then dispersed into what became Ripon as it is now.
So I wanted to that original building
and to buffer it up with this scaffold
to acknowledge a sense of buttressing
and support for the community
but also of course to --
because the frame work is somewhat tenuous,
it might look like it might be breaking or falling down.
It acknowledges that, that buffering
and that support may not be realized.
That a town like this can rise or fall
by how it acts and how it behaves.
The image is meant to be positive
but not celebratory necessarily.
It has a darkness and it's -- if nothing else -- complex.
There's a fragility to the fact that it's supported
but who knows ultimately what may occur.
Everybody thought it was a great idea.
And then when I finished it,
the local paper was -- the responses were mixed.
Put it that way.
I think that art can be confrontation
even if it s not the goal.
It's a clear message
but it's not necessarily the assumed message
of being a positive outlook on the city.
And it's a little bit more complex
and so people were challenged by it.
But I'm okay with that.
A public art work,
people don't come to it thinking
I'm going to be challenged necessarily.
They don't know what it's going to be.
Whereas if someone goes to a museum,
they may be prepared for that sophistication
or complexity in the work.