FORT SMITH -- At the corner of North G and 14th streets in Fort Smith, right next to Darby Junior High School, stands The Rainbow Embassy.
It is a house unlike anything else in the neighborhood. As the name suggests, it is a home of bright, vibrant colors with sides and a roof being painted with different patterns to create a multifaceted, surreal collage of images. One of the most prominent features amid this flurry of details is the face of an animal staring across the street with black eyes filled with white dots and a small pink tongue sticking out beneath a gray nose.
Beside the house is a small shed painted in a similar creative style, with the front forming the rainbow-colored, geometric face of another animal peering out with the same kind of eyes. Together, the two structures carve a striking figure against the more muted color palettes that characterize the surrounding area.
The Rainbow Embassy is one of the more recent works by Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel, 39. San Miguel, along with his assistant, Marcos, created the piece during the 2019 Unexpected, an event that ran throughout downtown Fort Smith from Oct. 7-12.
However, this was not San Miguel's first visit to the city. Claire Kolberg, director of the Unexpected, said he contributed a piece called The Universal Chapel during the 2016 Unexpected. For this work, he took a building located at Garrison and Rogers avenues and painted it using his trademark visual sensibilities. This site would go on to serve as the location for Fort Smith's Gateway Park.
"It was a bigger house and [I] tried to play with the architecture in the same way as Universal Chapel, but with many more surfaces and dimensions in the structure," San Miguel said of The Rainbow Embassy in an email interview.
San Miguel said the animal heads that can be seen on the house and shed create a dynamic composition between the two structures, fulfilling the concept of them as "two resting mythic animals."
"Arkansas is a perfect place to transform a house like this because it's a very quiet place in 'deep America' and most of the houses are the same color," San Miguel said. "I think because of this homogeneous quality and relationship of the region to nature Rainbow Embassy was a great concept to bring to this space."
CAPTURING IMAGINATIONS
Kolberg said the Unexpected is a yearly weeklong event. It is produced by 64.6 Downtown, a nonprofit organization that focuses on revitalization projects for downtown Fort Smith, and was founded in 2015 by Steve Clark as a way to spark creative placemaking in the area.
Fort Smith, Kolberg said, is Arkansas' second largest city and pulls from a large metropolitan statistical area. However, it suffered in the 2008 recession.
"And the city is making great strides, but budgets are very greatly impacted," Kolberg said. "And we thought that a very quick and fun way to spark interest again in what was happening in Fort Smith, and what could happen in Fort Smith, just the possibility of placemaking and economic development, is through art."
"It's a great way to capture peoples' attention, their imagination. It puts eyes on your city in a different way. We wanted to shift the narrative of what was possible not just in Fort Smith, but in Arkansas."
The exclusive curatorial partner for the Unexpected since its inception, Kolberg said, has been the global creative house Justkids. 64.6 has been tapping into Justkids' expertise and roster of artists from around the world to ensure that what it does in Fort Smith and Arkansas reflects positively on both it and the artists involved.
Charlotte Dutoit, the founder of Justkids, said in an email interview that the company has a network of over 100 public artists with which it consistently works on a project-by-project basis. Justkids specializes in developing, curating and producing art, mainly in public spaces, working with cities, developers, community organizations and businesses to bring comprehensive art programs to fruition. It also works as an art consultant specializing in large scale artworks for private collections.
Kolberg said the 2019 Unexpected featured a total of six artists, including San Miguel.
"And we really love his vibrant, geometric style because, while it's very cheerful and fun to look at, there's always a social message attached to whatever it is he's doing," Kolberg said. "He very much uses his art to share things that are important to him. For example, The Rainbow Embassy ... is a place where all can feel welcome, that anybody regardless of their age, race, gender, or socioeconomic status is welcome to come and enjoy this place, and that fits in very nicely with the mission of the Unexpected."
Before the Unexpected, The Rainbow Embassy was just an empty house, according to Kolberg. The work has generated "very positive" feedback overall.
Dutoit said Justkids has worked with San Miguel on a regular basis since 2015 and had the opportunity to collaborate with him on some of his major projects in the United States. She described San Miguel's work as "wonderfully universal and playful," with it also showcasing his mastery of color, composition and dominance of complex visual narratives through his symbolic motifs.
"His public pieces are enchanting and command attention, enabling publics to re-discover their city with new eyes, which is the best thing public art can do," Dutoit said.
TRANSFORMATION
San Miguel said he began painting in the streets around 1996, when he was 16 years old, although it did not cross his mind that he could be an artist at the time. He does not remember a specific moment when he decided to become an artist, but thinks he possibly became more focused on the idea when he started to do a lot of commissions and travel for art around 2004 to 2006.
San Miguel went on to graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in fine arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2007. He has cited a wide range of artists as influences. These include figures such as Hieronymus Bosch, Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, as well as nonwestern artists like Keiichi Tanaami and Tomokazu Matsuyama from Japan and Os Gemeos from Brazil.
The most important part of San Miguel's work, according to him, is transformation.
"I approach gray and dull walls and voided spaces with the ambition to transform them into more colorful spaces," San Miguel said.
In addition to creating murals and sculptures in public places around the world, San Miguel also develops multimedia artworks for galleries and institutions in his studio in Madrid.
"The concepts of my artwork is the progressional evolution of symbology," San Miguel said. "You have to see the evolution of all the artworks to understand all the symbols, but in a general sense my artwork deals with ideas of existentialism and universal concepts like love, freedom, identity and multiculturality. I like to invite people to reflect on different ideas."
An "artist statement" on San Miguel's website says that art must be present in public spaces constantly. When asked why he believes this is important, San Miguel replied that he thinks all the contemporary cities should present a lot of public art to fight, or create balance with, advertising.
"People are saturated with commercial/advertising centered messages in the streets," San Miguel said. "It's important to include in that landscape more art to get inspired, change the daily lives and, ultimately, change society."
State Desk on 01/21/2020