Colorado Seen
05/2011
TAKING ART TO THE STREETS Also: JROTC RAIDERS n CINCO DE MAYO
From the Editor Times they are a-changin’. . . With the end of the school year, our exploration of the lives of the JROTC cadets at Montbello High is over. There is one more installment of the story to come in our next issue. Montbello itself will change next fall from a traditonal high school to three specialized schools, a College Prep Academy, a HighTech Early College program with collegelevel classes, and a grades 6-12 Center for International Studies. JROTC will continue at Montbello, but how it will fit into the new school structure is still being planned. On a personal level, I have a new job working for one of ColoradoSeen’s advertisers, Englewood Camera. ColoradoSeen will definitely continue, but my new commitment may mean changes in frequency or format. We’ll see how it goes.
Put Colorado on your wall
Colorado Seen An internet image magazine Editor & Publisher Andrew Piper We welcome comments and letters. Submit them to: coloradoseen@comcast.net To submit work or story ideas for consideration, send an e-mail to: coloradoseen@comcast.net If you would like to advertise in ColoradoSeen, send an e-mail to coloradoseen@comcast.net for information on rates and interactive links. Copyright © 2011 ColoradoSeen
On the cover: Florida artist Jennifer Chaparro reproduces I am Crow, an image by printmaker Kirby Sattler, fourteen feet high on Denver’s Larimer Square, during the Denver Chalk Art Festival on June 4.
Prints of pictures appearing in ColoradoSeen are available for purchase. Just click this ad.
CINCO DE MAYO
STORY & Photos by Andy Piper
A weekend of celebration for Denver’s Latino community
Dressed in the rainbow hues of Guadalajara, young dancers swirl to the sounds of the Jarabe Tapatío — often called the ‘Hat Dance’, in Denver’s Cinco de Mayo parade.
Final touches are everything in preparing for Denver’s Cinco de Mayo parade, whether helping polish papa’s custom low-rider car, above, or making a last adjustment to a young dancer’s hairdo, opposite.
It was a famous victory.
American cars, Mexican flags: Cinco de Mayo in Denver 6
On May 5, 1862, a force of 4,000 Mexican soldiers heald off an invading French army twice that size, enroute from the Gulf seaport of Veracruz to capture Mexico City. That was the last time a European power attempted an invasion of the Western hemisphere. And Mexican resistance ultimately prevented France
With a suspension built on hydraulic lifts, a Cadillac ‘low-rider’ bounces through downtown Denver during the Cinco de Mayo parade. Low riders are a hot-rod style originating in the Latino communities of Southern California.
from establishing a permanent empire on America’s southern border in support of the rebels during the Civil War. Today, the Fifth of May (Cinco de Mayo) is celebrated around the globe, wherever there outposts of Mexican culture. And with a population that is 32% Hispanic, Denver is no exception.
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To the rhythm of drums and conch horns, Delfina Franco dances in Aztec costume in front of the Colorado state capitol in Denver’s Civic Center Plaza. At right, Ozomatli Esquibel, 2, helps provide the beat for the Huitzilopochtli Grupo de Danza on a drum of his own, alongside his father, Michael 10
enver’s celebration runs over the calendar weekend closest to May 5. Saturday morning begins with a parade through Denver’s highrise downtown district. Dance groups, singers, floats and collections of wildlypainted custom and low-rider cars. The parade route empties out into Civic Center Plaza, a 16-acre park between city hall and the state capitol. For the next two days, this is the heart of Denver’s celebration, thumping with the beats of music from all regions and
A seductive glance, white lace dresses and straw hats distinguish the dancing style of Veracruz.
As the ball winds down to a close, Montbello cadet Rebecca Doane, left, and guest Melissa Orozco talk by the glow of a cell phone.
eras of Mexico, and wafted by the smells of tacos al carbon, tacos al pastor, mole sauce and other traditional delicacies of the country. Mexican beers (Tecate, Dos Equis, Sol, Pacifico, Corona) flow freely. Four stages provide concerts, and the plaza’s Greek Amphitheater is set aside for recreational dancing to the sounds of local and Mexican bands. At dusk, attention shifts to another Denver Cinco de Mayo tradition — cruising Federal Boulevard in hotrods flying Mexican flags. It becomes a specator event, with onlookers lining the street. One wonders how those original 4,000 soldiers would react to this celebration of their victory. Probably with a smile. n Left, a boy plays around the base of an oversized inflatable beer can. At right, a gaucho (cowboy) hat overlooks dancing in the plaza’s Greek Amphitheater. 14
A mother dances with her teenage son to a thumping Mexican gaucho beat in the amphitheater of Civic Center Plaza.
Each day of the celebration closes with one of Denver’s great Cinco de Mayo traditions, cruising Federal Boulevard with hot cars and Mexican flags, far into the night. At left, a couple kiss at a bus stop as the cars roll past. n
High School Soldiers: Fourth in a series
RAIDER PLATOON
The newest competitive team in Montbello High School’s JROTC program tests itself in Colorado’s militar y hear tland
A JROTC cadet from Montbello High School thinks through his role as ‘victim’ before a stretcher-bearing race.
STORY & Photos by Andy Piper
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Montbello’s stretcher team brings it home after a 400-meter run over ditches and slopes.
t’s 7:45 am The sun is just clearing the trees as a Denver Public Schools bus pulls into the parking lot of Fountain-Fort Carson High School, set on the edge of the Great Plains at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain south of Colorado Springs. A two-hour drive from Montbello High in north Denver, it has meant an early reveille for Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Wayne L. Meeusen and his ‘Raider Platoon’. But it’s worth it for the opportunity to take part in a Raider Challenge competition, a series of tests of strength, skill and endurance with a miltary flavor, against other JROTC programs from around eastern Colorado. Trained as an Army Ranger himself, LTC Meeusen, the director of Montbello’s JROTC program, 23
Vignettes from the Raider Challenge. In the tire flip, two 3-man teams from each school must maneuver a 180-lb tire 100 yards each way — without rolling it. 24
has taken personal charge of the Raider program. Today, in the last Challenge of the year, he will see how his team has developed. The Challenge contains five events: physical fitness (situps and push-
ups), orienteering, a 400-meter stretcher race, a 3K jog-march, and a “mystery event” chosen by the host school. The events are judged by JROTC officers and non-coms, and also by volunteer Army personnel
from neighboring Fort Carson.
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ountain sits in the heart of a heavily military region, surrounded
by NORAD’s air defense HQ deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain, the Air Force Academy and Petersen Air Force Base at Colorado Springs ten miles to the north, and Fort Carson to the west and south - a
137,000-acre training range once the base of the famed 10th Mountain Divison, and now home to the 4th Infantry Division. and a training facility for desert, mechanized, armored, airborne and special forces units.
The Montbello team, dressed in ACUPAT camouflage and desert combat boots, first take on the fitness test. Pushups and situps, as many as possible in 60 seconds. The judges get right down in
A regular Army judge from nearby Fort Carson gets down and dirty inspecting the pushup techniqe of one Montbello cadet.
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Friendly backs comes in handy when signing the maps for the orienteering competition. In beret at right is Montbello JROTC program director Lt. Col. Wayne Meeusen
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the grass with the cadets, to make sure each situp or pushup is complete. and by the book
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ext is the orienteering test. Given maps depicting 20 control points spotted randomly around Fountain-Ft. Carson High’s 50 acres, each team member has 30 minutes to see how many of the targets he can find. Then it’s time for the “mystery event” — which turns out to be a tire flip. Two three-man teams must move a 180-lb tractor tire over a 100-yard course. one team out, the other back. The tire must be flipped - no rolling allowed. As they wait their turn, the Montbello cadets strategize the challenge, and decide the key is to put two men on the corners for control, and the strongest of each team in the middle for power. The fourth chal28
A Montbello cadet scans the terrain for the next control point in the orienteering competition, after punching his map at the marker in the foreground.
No stragglers. Montbello’s platoon stays in tight march formation as they start their 3K jog.
lenge is a stretcher race. Four men must carry a fifth at a battlefield pace out and back on a 200-meter course over ditches and up a small hill. Stumbles costs points. Dropping the ‘patient’ costs a lot of points. Montbello’s team loses no points, but posts a slow time. Finally, there is the 3K jog-march, out of the school grounds and into the surrounding neighborhood. The teams must stay in tight march formation — no more than an arm’s length apart in two columns.
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t the closing awards, Montbello winds one personal medal for fitness and one team trophy. LTC Meeusen is philosopical. He reminds his platoon that some schools are taking home no trophies. For a firstyear effort, he is encouraged. “They did good. They did good.” n
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‘Montebello Warriors! HOO-ah!’ Col. Meeusen, in beret, leads the Raider Platoon in a cheer at the end of the competition.
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On the bus to return to Denver, a Montbello cadet proudly holds the team’s trophy for the day. n
ART
ON ITS KNEES
The pavement of Denver’s Larimer Square becomes an artists’ canvas for two days every June during the Chalk Art Festival
Artists and their drawings stretch into the distance along Larimer Square in Denver during the Chalk Art Festival.
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‘Ohmy God! I’m a
he words apply to most of the artists taking part in Denver’s annual June Chalk Art Festival — but it was Danaë Neldon who said them. Neldon looks down in bemusement at her legs, which shade from blue to orange to a flesh color — but not her flesh color.
rainbow!’
STORY & Photos by Andy Piper
That’s the story with pavement art. Chalk goes on the pictures; pictures go on the pavement; artists
kneel on the pavement; chalk goes on the artists. Oh, well. . . . Neldon, a student at the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, is part of a team coloring in a 14-foot by 14-foot square in the middle of Denver’s Larimer Square. The image is an intriguing but indecipherable abstract swirl of colors — until the team captian places a four-foot-tall mirrored cylinder upright in the center. Reflected in the
Chalk ends up in the most interesting places during Denver’s Chalk Art Festival. On the face of artist Mythica von Griffyn, above, and on knees everywhere, opposite. 38
n Click here to see a video about the 2008 Denver Chalk Art Festival.
mirror, suddenly the swirls resolve into recognizable shapes: a bit of a fantasy borrowed from a William Blake painting, a portrait of pop singer Lady Gaga.
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enver’s Chalk Art Festival, also known as the Piazza dell’Arte, is full of surprises like that. Two hundred of those 14-by-14-foot squares, each with its own artist and picture, line three blocks of Larimer St. and intersecting 14th St. in the historic district of LoDo (Lower Downtown). The images come from many sources: classical pictures, photographs —or the artists’ imaginations. Stephanie Andres usually creates selfportraits of herself at work. This year, she took it back a few years, drawing from a photograph of herself drawing — at age 3.
Chalk cowboy — the shadow of Tyler Marsh’s hat falls across his work as he roughs in colors, above. Opposite, the face of singer Lady Gaga appears twice in the creation of a team from the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design — distorted on the pavement, and with normal proportions after reflection in a cylindrical mirror. 41
Theresa Milka blows away chalk dust from a student’s drawing in an area of the festival reserved for the youngest artists.
Many of the artists are Coloradans, but some, such as Jennifer Chaparro, (on the cover and opening spread) come from as far away as Palm Beach, Florida. Or Neldon, who came to Denver to study art and design, but hails originally from Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
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Bowls laid out in spectrum order hold the chalk palette for one team of artists, above. Opposite, an artist momentarily becomes one with his subject, a parody on Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, as his finger reaches out to smooth a chalk contour. 44
ot all are professional artists, either. Neil Lillard, for example. “I’m a contractor. I just do this for fun.” For those really just starting out, onehalf block on 14th Street is reserved for kids to try their hand at pavement art. “We love it. Its an excellent way for the public to witness the creative process in real time.,” says artist Mary Eccles. Or as Robert Salzman puts it, “A lot of poeple come out and show their support to all us artists on our knees, sweating our. . . our backs off, I guess is the best way to say it.” n
The artist at work, then and now. In chalk, Colorado artist Stephanie Andres recreates a photo of herself — already drawing at age 3. n