Young artists transform Mesa Verde Park in the International District

Dotted across the dry landscape of Mesa Verde Park in Albuquerque’s International District stand sculptures: a tall abstract butterfly poised to take flight, pillars with the life stories of locals immortalized in steel, a mosaicked bench, a splash of color against the dusty ground, and now an archway emblazoned with yucca, agave, bats and moths.

For the past five years, artists from the Harwood Art Center have constructed these sculptures as the focus of their Apprenticeship for Art and Social Justice, which incorporates community outreach, artistic development and leadership training. This summer, Harwood apprentices are constructing their fourth and final sculpture, “Portal,” a tiled archway intended to serve as an entry to the park which, according to exhibition text, depicts the symbiosis between local plants and animals “to remind us of our inherent connection to the land and to each other.”

The apprenticeship is a paid opportunity for artists ages 17-24 to gain experience; for many, the program is their first paid job in the artistic world.

“It’s been an uphill battle to get the resources and attention that this park needs and deserves,” said Jen DePaolo, the project director for the apprenticeship and the director of outreach at Harwood, “But I really do believe that artists have the power to sort of mirror their time and draw attention and resources.”

And that’s exactly what the apprenticeship has hoped to accomplish at Mesa Verde Park, which is between Louisiana and Wyoming NE, north of Copper.

When DePaolo first took notice of the park, it was considered a public safety threat to students walking to the nearby Hayes Middle School. At the time, she was working with Harwood to provide a free after-school art program to students at Hayes, and she joined the community council to better understand the neighborhood she was serving.

Most students walking to Hayes would pass through the park, DePaolo said, but many felt unsafe. There were reports, DePaolo said, of children being followed by people, asked to transport mysterious packages, and in one case, a child stepped on a syringe believed to be involved in drug use and had to be transported to the hospital for testing.

The park was “even browner than it is now,” DePaolo said, due to an outdated and often unreliable irrigation system. The park also had few trees and consequently few areas to relax in the shade.

“This park hasn’t gotten a lot of love from the city,” said Spence Fisher, a landscape artist and leader in the program. “I mean, now it’s getting attention, which is excellent, but in the past few years, it’s kind of just been pushed on the back burner.”

Now the city is fixing the irrigation system after years of dysfunction. Apprentices and community members told the Journal that they’ve seen city employees working on the irrigation almost every day. The timeline for it being fully repaired is uncertain, but Franchesca Perdue, a spokesperson for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, says repairs began three months ago and that many of the major ones were completed last month.

Two years ago DePaolo saw first hand how transformative a combination of water and art can be. During a plentiful monsoon season, as apprentices finished the walkways of the “Camino” art piece, greenery returned to the park and so did the people.

“We just saw really positive engagement with the park, and that mitigated everything else,” DePaolo said. “Less trash, less sharps, less feces — like it was just a functioning city park.”

People interacted with the implemented artworks, many of which are designed to be be visually appealing but also functional. They also provide a place for people to gather, sit and enjoy shade. Fisher and DePaolo hope the garden’s medicinal plants can be harvested and used in the future.

Essential to the art-making process is community collaboration and input, DePaolo said.

The apprenticeship has worked with children at the local community center and participants in Bernalillo County’s Supported After Care Program, a voluntary residential program for people in recovery from substance abuse, to stamp and create tiles for this year’s sculptures.

The apprenticeship has also hosted meetings for public comment at Hayes Middle School, the Mesa Verde Community Center, the International District Healthy Communities Coalition, and the park itself.

The garden is the next evolution of the apprenticeship’s work. After the first sculptures went up, community members told artists that they wanted more usable natural space in tandem with the established art pieces, Fisher said.

“We’ve seen even just working here, how the community has responded, like more people have been coming over and saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing? You know, like, how can I help?’” Fisher said, while apprentices built rock walls and swung pickaxes into the compacted dirt behind him, working fervently to finish the infrastructure for the garden before next week’s Dedication Ceremony and Celebration on Thursday.

Locals Barry Peterson and Marissa Vallejos strolled through the park Wednesday morning and told the Journal that more kids have been playing at the park since the artworks went up.

The park has also seen an uptick in other visitors — the homeless — DePaolo said. That’s after Coronado Park closed last year due to a high-rate of “narcotic usage, trafficking and organized crime” at an encampment of unhoused people there, the city said.

On Wednesday morning, people appearing to be homelessness waited out the heat of the day in the shade of the park’s trees. One man slept on a bare mattress; others sat beside shopping carts in the wilted grass.

“Why have a park if nobody can use it?” Peterson said.

Alina Pozas, a working artist, helped apprentices in the garden on Wednesday. Pozas is an instructor at Harwood and also works at Artstreet of Albuquerque, an open art studio where a large demographic of clients experience homelessness.

Part of the impact of the apprenticeship’s work, Pozas said, is bringing positive attention to a part of town that rarely receives it.

“It’s not a different universe,” Pozas said, “People sometimes feel like it is.”