EMERGING FROM CONTROVERSY

A ‘River of Life’ Flows through the Petroglyphs.

Some 30 years ago, children from four Albuquerque schools boarded buses for the pueblos of Acoma, Isleta, Laguna, San Felipe and Zuni. Once there, they met with Native American children and shared lunch and a task: collecting rocks. Buckets and buckets of rocks.

Led by artist Susan Myō Ōn Linnell, the children’s efforts resulted in “River of Life,” a mosaic mural stretching 365 feet across a sound wall along Unser Boulevard at Dellyne Avenue NW near the Petroglyph National Monument. Over the almost three years that it took to complete the project, more than 250 children participated in this cross-cultural exchange, including those from Alameda, Monte Vista and Sierra elementary schools and Washington Middle School, as well as those from the pueblos.

Linnell, an accomplished artist whose mixed-media paintings, collage and drawings are included in many private and museum collections, hadn’t worked on a public art project prior to “River of Life.” “My interest in it was working with kids, so I just invented this project that could involve them,” says Linnell, who had been a substitute teacher.

“The design is an abstraction of the timeline of arrival of five different cultures that make up this rich place we live in,” Linnell says. “Time is like a river so it was natural to use the image of a flowing river because we live in a river valley, which very much shapes the lives of everyone.”

The project began in the early 1990s as part of the Unser Boulevard expansion. Under the state’s so-called 1% for Art law, a percentage of bond money allocated for a capital improvement project must be spent on public art.

At the time, the road expansion was mired in controversy because of its proximity to the petroglyphs. Linnell, a Zen Buddhist, recognized the historic and sacred importance of these ancient carved images and says she approached her work prayerfully. An extra step she took was to seek approval of the design by the All

Pueblo Council of Governors. “I wanted to make sure the image wasn’t offensive in some way,” she says.

She also met with governors of the five pueblos and teachers at the Albuquerque schools to get their buy-in. Then she arranged the children’s field trips.

After gathering the stones, the children helped create the mosaic by placing them on flat concrete panels, according to Linnell’s design. The completed panels then had to be transported and lifted onto the wall, which required help from construc- tion specialists.

“It was an incredibly difficult project,” Linnell says. “But I’m the kind of artist who never thinks about how much work it’s going to be. I’m literally not capable. And I laugh about that.”

After all the years, Linnell wonders what the children – now grown adults -recall about their work on the mural. “My hope was that one day, they would drive their own kids over there and say, ‘Look, this is what we did together.’” —LISA

OCKER