Graffiti becomes canvas for mural

CLOVIS - One way to deal with graffiti is to cover the scrawl by painting the whole wall, which leaves you with a canvas, if you know a mural artist.

Kala Adair owns two downtown Clovis buildings with walls that were scarred with graffiti. But she happens to be friends with Patsy Delk, a retired art teacher who still connects with young volunteers, and Gena Davis, another retired teacher who paints murals and knows how to coach young artist volunteers.

One wall now sports the first of what will be three panels of a 100-foot-long, two-story mural.

The first panel is a dazzling desert village scene that demonstrates Davis' love of bright, primary colors, not to mention the enthusiastic help she's getting from the fourth- to sixth-grade students who do much of the brushwork, starting with the white base coat that wipes out the graffiti.

They worked hard on Monday, and at least one of them, sixth-grader Josie Smith of Muleshoe, knows exactly where to go to become exactly the kind of artist she wants to become.

"I want to go to Ringling College," she said. Ringling, she explains, is a Florida school that specializes in training digital artists, people who can create serious art on computers.

"We aren't doing this alone," Delk said.

While Adair is providing the paint and art supplies, the project is also getting assistance from Myers Electric, which provides scaffolding, and other donors.

The building whose wall is currently in progress, may soon help enclose a coffee shop and restaurant, Adair said. She also owns the Firehouse Work Place on Pile Street downtown, which adjoins the opposite wall.

Delk taught for 22 years, she said, the first six in Clovis schools, the next 16 in Christian schools in the area.

She got an early start as an artist by helping her father Charles Hager paint signs and billboards in eastern New Mexico.

Davis was a teacher in Clovis schools for 24 years before she retired, she said.