This Thursday in Rapid City’s Art Alley, six graffiti artists will join together to paint a mural in support of the brand-new, innovative art park at the Cheyenne River Youth Project® campus in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. According to Sara Johnson Levy of About This Life Inc., the organization responsible for the Art Alley mural project, the artists will paint together from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, September 11.
About This Life’s Aaron “AMP” Pearcy and the Dahl Fine Art Center’s Tyler “Siamese” Read are two of the artists who will be working on paintings that are intended to raise both awareness and funding for the 25-year-old, not-for-profit youth organization’s art park, which has been christened Waniyetu Wowapi — “Winter Count” in the Lakota language. The Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park will be formally dedicated at 3 p.m. on Monday, September 15 at the CRYP campus on East Lincoln Street.
“I asked our community, and they chose the name,” said Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director. “Translated from Lakota, ‘Waniyetu Wowapi’ actually means a year period, from snow to snow, written on something flat. The winter count is how the Lakota nation traditionally recorded its history, so we think it’s a fitting name for our new park. This is a free public space where members of our community can express their own unique voices and life experiences in a positive, healthy way.”
Indeed, located adjacent to CRYP’s Cokata Wiconi (“Center of Life” in Lakota) teen center, the Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park will be a safe outdoor space for self-expression through graffiti art and traditional painting. It will benefit those who create artwork within its borders, but it also will benefit those who choose to visit the ever-changing walls of art.
The art park has become a true labor of love for Garreau, who was first exposed to the realities of contemporary graffiti art when accomplished Minneapolis-based graffiti artist Peyton Scott Russell came to the Cheyenne River reservation this past May to teach his “Art of Creative Lettering” classes at Cokata Wiconi. The five-day program concluded with a youth art show at the outdoor space that would, months later, become the Winter Count Art Park.
Peyton (he is known professionally by just his first name) noted that most people think of vandalism and tagging when they think of graffiti. He said the murals he creates (he’s responsible for the “Lakota Style” mural on the side of Eagle Butte’s defunct Main Street bowling alley), and the artwork produced by the young people he teaches, reveal that the art form is so much more than that.
“Graffiti has something deeper, from an artistic standpoint,” noted Peyton, an Art Institute of Chicago alum who was admitted to the prestigious school due to his unique graffiti work. “There’s another intent: to improve society through the medium. Not to destroy or vandalize, but to create.
“The art form is still shrouded in mystery, and it’s still controversial, so we need to broaden people’s minds and horizons,” he continued. “Thinking it’s all about vandalism is misguided. Graffiti is about telling stories, about seeing your environment in the canvas. That’s the greatest appeal of street art, of graffiti art.”
With the large-scale graffiti murals, Peyton said, a community can see the artistic values inherent in the movement. And then those viewers will have a different reaction when they see similar work down the road.
“When I did the mural and the art classes at CRYP, I had two platforms to speak from,” he added. “People could see the work and know I’m not just out there tagging. Plus, I teach kids, and that art show at the end of the week was a big deal. The kids could really talk about their work, and that’s the biggest compliment I got from parents and elders.”
Peyton is enthusiastic about CRYP’s new Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park and the role it will play in the lives of Cheyenne River’s young people. It will plant and nurture a seed, he said, that will bear fruit for the rest of their lives.
“You have to empower children right now, when they’re young,” he said, “ so they can articulate what they want to say, and so they have that sense of pride in their work. That’s so important.”
Garreau agreed. “The concept for the art park just hit me like a ton of bricks when Peyton was here in May,” she reflected. “I realized this is what we had to do, and that the time is now. It will be an evolving project, always changing and growing, and it will speak to where we are as a community, and to who we are as a people. It will plant a seed for community change.
“I didn’t realize that people would grab onto the idea like they have,” she continued. “I took a risk because I felt instinctively, and passionately, that this was the right thing for us. It makes me feel good to see all the positive feedback; one woman wrote on our Facebook page, ‘This is so cool — every reservation should have one!’”
Those interested in making a contribution can sponsor a section of the Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park by making a tax-deductible donation. Those funds will be used to purchase materials for building the art structures. Online donations can be made at https://www.crowdrise.com/crypartpark/fundraiser/lakotayouth. For more information, call the CRYP headquarters at (605) 964-8200.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities.