Alpine’s Gallery Night, Inc. will be painting its second Mexican Calendar mural this fall, in a series of six to be completed over the next five years. Our goal is to recreate Mexican calendar art to beautify the walls of public and private building in rural Alpine, Texas. By utilizing the Mexican calendar tops we are able to paint a scene in the history of Alpine for visitors, locals and tourists to see daily. The historic calendars were snapshots of a distinctly Mexican world. By embracing this truly popular art form we can also embrace the cultural history of our region and its inhabitants.
An iconic historic building located in the heart of downtown Alpine, built in 1940 and used as the “Woolhouse”, known to locals as the Big Bend Wool and Mohair. It is no longer in operation and is now used as a storage building. It is located next to our railroad tracks where 350 people arrive twice a day on Amtrak and will be able to view it. The new mural will by 108’ long and 13’ 6” at the peak of the roof. Three classic calendar paintings will be combined to form the image for the final mural. The central image, “Mujer con Tunas”, was originally painted by Jorge Gonzalez Carmarena.
Underneath the mural a 40’ x 8’ calendar of this September will be painted. To raise funds we sell the days of the calendar for $500 to have the sponsors names painted on it. The names will remain forever and will be on the “Mexican” calendar that we produce at the end of the year for 2015, where the sponsors’ names will be forever seen on the month of September. We did this to raise funds for our last Mural Project and found it to be hugely successful and a great money maker for our organization. We produced 300 calendars, sold them for $10 each and sold out before Christmas.
All of the murals produced throughout this ongoing project will be maintained by our organization with a product called “Frog Juice”, a UV protectant and graffiti deterrent. An application of the UV protectant will be re-applied 3-5 years later.
Award winning mural artist, Stylle Read of Cleburne, Texas will paint the mural with four volunteer artists that assisted in last year’s project. Alpine is filled with pride that our organization has taken on this challenging project and supports our efforts. Alpine is designated as a Cultural Arts District by Texas Commission on the Arts.
