Ishi Mural Painter Profile

Yesterday, the Sacramento Bee did a profile on Alex Forster (a.k.a. Cabrón), who painted the Ishi mural at 24th & Broadway.

Sometimes filling up with gasoline leads to revelations. I remember a rather unpleasant revelation back in - oh, was it 1999? - when I was filling up in Davis, at a station where they had just installed gas pumps with TV screens, which just happened to be tuned to CNN. I heard a horrible rasping sound, and turned to look at the gas pump. My jaw dropped: there was Yasser Arafat, speaking to me from the pump.

This mural is much, much easier on the eyes and ears than the late Yasser Arafat. A very pleasant revelation!:

At first the intersection of 24th Street and Broadway seems like any other. Gas station on one corner, fast-food restaurant on another.

But that prosaic quality ends when one notices the eyes.

They are a pair of black-and-white eyes, 2 feet tall. They belong to an enigmatic face that, in turn, anchors a bold cinema screen-sized mural adjacent to a 76 gas station and market.

The mural is the work of 36-year-old artist Alex Forster (a.k.a. Cabrón). From end to end, the artwork measures 16 feet by 80 feet.

The striking face is Forster's depiction of Ishi – the renowned last surviving member of the Yahi tribe. In 1908, Ishi walked away from a solitary and nomadic life in the Sierra foothills and into the nascent 20th century to become a living specimen of an American Indian culture almost fully extinguished.

In the mural, Ishi holds a gold nugget in each hand, with rays of gold radiating outward. The nuggets are Forster's nod to the Gold Rush – the historical moment that sealed the fate of the area's remaining American Indians circa 1849.

The fact that Forster's mural carries such historical weight is no accident. The mural was commissioned by the nonprofit organization Valley Vision. That organization solicited designs from area artists with the intention of covering a bland, east-facing wall. The mandate was that the mural inform either the past or present state of life in the Sacramento Valley.

Forster's Ishi design was picked from a pool of 20 entries and earned him a $1,000 prize.

"I wanted to paint something big that would strike people right away," he said.

It took 160 hours of labor and $500 worth of paint. And when it was finished, its owners were pleased.

..."I went big so that you could see it," said Forster.

...Forster said he feels that working on murals will be a new horizon for him as an artist.

"This mural is more of a Los Angeles-style mural – where murals are done over big walls," he said.

Some, like local artist and cultural activist Xico Gonzalez, see the mural as fitting squarely within a proud tradition of muraling in Sacramento.

..."This style is different than the old guard of muralists in the region, since it is done in a graphic style rather than a painterly one."