- [Narrator] Support provided by the Amarillo Area Foundation and the Dr. Kent Roberts and Ilene Roberts Balliett Foundation.

(upbeat music) For decades, Cadillac Ranch has been a living canvas with thick layers of spray paint accumulating on the deteriorating car bodies, a vibrant, ever-evolving symbol of creativity along Old Route 66.

But that spirit of expression has spread.

While the paint continues to fly at Cadillac Ranch, those same spray cans are transforming Amarillo.

Across downtown, old brick buildings have become towering canvases, bringing the city to life through bold, sweeping murals.

In this chapter of "In Open Air," we uncover the metamorphosis of creative expression, tracing its journey from an isolated roadside attraction into the heart of a city reborn in color.

(country music) (country music) - Okay, one of the themes that I think is really interesting, we talked about decay art, but I also think that education-based art is so important for this area.

So the mural movements, a lot of them, the Blank Spaces Movement, and then Jon Revett working with the WT Mural Squad, it's not just about painting pictures on walls in the city or even in the rural areas.

Jon Revett has done the rural murals where he's taken students and traveled to lots of regional areas like Canadian and Plainview and done murals there.

But it's teaching a future generation of students how to make art, but make art for the public, or how to work with a client, or how to build an identity for a space or for the city through a mural painting.

I mean, murals are big and they have to make a statement.

So I think what's so interesting is, even going all the way back to O'Keeffe, the reason she came here wasn't to be an artist, it was to be an educator.

And West Texas was founded as a normal college, which is a teacher's college.

And even Blank Spaces, Shawn Kennedy working in Caprock High School.

He's teaching his high school students how to do a skillset that they can take on for the rest of their lives.

So maybe it goes back to that idea about getting outside of the museum, like how do we make art more democratized, more public, but also how do we train our artists to work within a kind of more public-based art environment and we're doing it here.

So I really think that the idea of teaching is a kind of foundational thing for this art story that might be overlooked, but I think it really needs to be acknowledged, how important, not just making art, but educating people to make art and educating the public how to love it.

It's a lot of outreach that goes on rather than just making art in a studio, sticking in a museum and the end.

If you're talking about public and outreach, I think that education is like a third component that's really important.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The mural movement in the Texas panhandle is more than art.

It's education and community.

These programs train young artists in every stage of mural making, from design to preservation while emphasizing mentorship and real-world skills.

Working alongside experienced artists, students gain hands-on experience, transforming public spaces and shaping the next generation of creatives who will carry this movement forward.

(calming music) - What I call the Rural Mural Project, it actually came out of COVID because we really, I had been talking about murals.

Murals were starting to get more attention.

Hoodoo had just started.

People were getting excited about murals.

So people had approached me about doing murals, and then COVID hit and we couldn't do murals.

And so, it became this really long back and forth between different locations of these murals.

And so, the first one was the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.

It was a very fun experience.

And the unique part about these murals is they're abstract.

And so, this comes out of the idea that I think that there is a lot of representational murals out there.

And one of the things I would get from people is like, I want a mural, but I wanna put some cows in it and I wanna put a grain elevator or a train.

I mean, like the thing you can see across the street or your thing you can see in the museum or this?

I wanna do this differently.

I wanna make a mural that allows you to think and see your community in a different way.

So specifically the Panhandle-Plains mural was based on a painting of their collection called "Early Washburn", which was this dawn beautiful painting of a dawn over Washburn, Texas.

And I kind of saw the painting as this new day because it's the post-COVID world.

And so, it was a really fun experiment.

Then we quickly did a mural in Plainview on the Contemporary Art Museum in Plainview.

And then, we also did one in Stratford, Texas, on the Imagination Station and both those places are kind of public art spaces that we got to engage with.

(calm country music) - Yeah, it's one of those places where telephone poles, buildings, anything that extends above the horizon line becomes the landscape versus other areas where the landscape gets larger such as mountains and tall trees and things like that.

There's a real openness about Amarillo and I think that, for me at least, I had to leave to appreciate it.

There is something kind of mystical about this area and something that's even romantic about it when you really dig into it.

(calm country music) Our kids are starting to get jobs doing murals on their own.

I've got a number of interns that still work for me or that did work for our program that are now exhibiting work, that are now cultivating clientele and they're able to do this as independent artists.

And all of that came from what they got out of our program.

They're able to gain little bits of information and enough to be able to assemble that into, how can I make a living at this?

This is what I want to do, this is my passion.

How do I make that passion a viable way to keep the lights turned on and to pay the bills?

And even more than that, not just paying the bills, but how do I be successful at it?

How do I invest in a 401(k) and how do I work towards retirement or whatever?

Being an artist is not just about getting by.

It makes up like $4.5 billion in the Texas economy, the creative arts do.

I mean, there's a lot that you can do to make a living if you think a little bit differently.

(calm country music) - Making the city more vibrant through the murals, but also through kind of like teaching people why they matter, teaching students to keep painting them.

Murals don't last forever.

We're gonna have to paint over them at some point and that's okay, right?

That kind of like ongoing project.

It's not done yet.

And Amarillo has been really invested in their mural art as something that's putting us on the map and that's happening in not '60s and '70s, that's happening right now.

So, we started with O'Keeffe way back in the World War I era.

We've come through the '60s and '70s, and we're still alive with art here and a mural movement that's thriving.

(calm country music) - [Narrator] The Hoodoo Mural Festival transforms city walls into vibrant art, celebrating creativity, culture and community with murals, live music and local flavor.

- So we were traveling and we went and saw what Wynwood Walls was doing in Miami and how that was transforming that area.

Denver, the Crush Walls was kind of how this all formed, was following what they were doing in the Rhino District and the Arts District up there.

And then, when you just find these random places around the country, when we were in New Orleans and there was a really beautiful angel wings mural.

It was interactive and people just wanted to go up to it and then you could tell like, well then they kind of wanted to stay and they'd go have a cup of coffee and all that.

So you were seeing what the art did to help spur the activity, growth, revitalization.

So, that got us thinking about how this project could help.

In Dallas, I heard a lot of, "Well, I've driven through Amarillo."

"Okay.

Did you stop?"

"Well, we stopped at a hotel, but we were going to the mountains.

We were going somewhere else.

Amarillo's not where we wanted to be, it was just a means to get somewhere else."

So, the idea with the art was, how can we make Amarillo a destination along the way?

Maybe it's not the final destination, but it definitely helps.

Well, let's get off I-40, let's get out of that hotel.

Let's go see what... Maybe go to the ballpark, go to... "Oh, now there's all these murals downtown from these famous muralists that we've seen and heard about.

Well, let's go look around."

And then, maybe you fall into the coffee shop or you go eat at one of the restaurants downtown or just something like that.

So it kind of just helps spur that activity.

So we had this old building, 100 years old.

Well, maybe we should paint a mural on it.

And so, we were thinking about it for a while, and then actually my neighbor, Stuart West, walked into my office just unannounced, says, "Hey, you should paint a mural on this.

You should see what all these murals are doing on around the country.

We're like, "Well, we've been talking about this."

And he goes, "Well, if you'll help get it going, I'll help you fund it, too."

And so, that led to, let's do it.

Let's figure it out.

How do we do this?

And then, what was going to be one wall became six walls that year.

I mean, it was also really nice, too, 'cause not only did Hoodoo start at the same time, but you had Blank Spaces popping up.

And then after that, the City Mural Grant Program started up.

So they're kind of...

It was almost like, are we competing?

No, we need more art, the better.

As it all started working together, we concentrated downtown to try to make a more of a walkable, bikeable art gallery.

So somewhere you can take a mural tour and we do a bunch of those with the kids and all of that.

But then also with the mural grant program for the city, it's helped get art everywhere else, too.

And so, it's been nice to see where all the art has gone.

And then, we've been lucky to concentrate it here downtown.

You're right, our community has such a ingrained art culture.

There's amazing patronage to the arts here that I haven't seen.

I mean, it's amazing.

So when we started talking about doing these art projects, it was amazing to see how much support, and whether it's financial, in-kind connections, it just started flowing in.

And I mean, we couldn't do this 'cause I mean, being a nonprofit, it's hard to get those done without that support.

And it is a community that likes art and funds art and loves art.

I think that's the best thing about Hoodoo, is we started out of what can we do as a festival that kind of promotes a lot of diverse crowd, a different group that you don't see every day in Amarillo.

I mean, we're a very young diverse festival where our demographics is mainly that 35 and under.

And our tickets are female driven, so it's more female buyers and over 60% of our festival is under 35 and they're from all walks of life.

You would think you're in this big urban center when you go into the gates of - But it's also everyone's also there to get along and I think they're coming together through art.

They're using our festival to bring our community together.

Everyone's very happy.

We don't have fights.

We don't have all of these things that you see in kind of big, other big festivals.

We don't have to throw people out for drinking too much.

I mean, everyone's there to celebrate and come together and we love that it's through art and music.

(upbeat country music) - I've done murals all across the US, from Dallas and all across Texas, Houston, Austin, OKC, Denver, Miami, New York.

And to be able to bring that here to Amarillo was something that I was really excited about, seeing some of my favorite artists paint in the Hoodoo Festival.

So being able to be one of those people as well is a dream come true for sure.

My name is Jeremy Biggers, I'm a muralist and artist from Dallas, Texas, and I wanted to come lend my talents, to show Hoodoo what I do.

So this particular piece, I haven't titled it quite yet, but I wanted it to be about that wonderment, that curiosity that's within children, and just reminding whether you're a child, whether you're a child at heart, whether you're a full adult, just reminding us of the possibilities that can come from that rose that grows out of the concrete.

(country music) - I'm originally from St. Vrain, New Mexico, which is an hour and a half west of here.

So all the ambitious people move from where I am to here, so this is like the big city.

But growing up on a farm and ranch, horses, cattle, all of that, it's almost a little bit more pronounced and still alive here than it is there now that that landscape's changing and morphing into something else.

And it's still alive and well in Amarillo.

So coming from like a, I would say like more of a working class, blue collar cowboy culture, it's a little bit harder to impress people.

So you have to kind of have something a little bit more concrete art-wise because with places like this and anywhere else in the world really, you get the, "Well, I could have done that."

So there's something to always consider, just it kind of has to be good.

And then, the other cool thing though about Amarillo in particular is the open-mindedness, I would say, where people really do appreciate art and it tends to get a little bit more weird here.

So, it's kind of two juxtapositions of culture clashing together in the Panhandle.

- Oh, anytime you have public art I think it's a great thing.

I think it inspires young kids coming up that are artistic.

I think it provides a great splash of color to the community.

I think it shows vibrancy.

To me, it's kind of like whenever you have wildflower season.

Anytime you turn a corner and see a new wall full of color, it just makes me smile and I think it represents good things happening in the community.

So this is based on a Guy Clark song.

The lyric is always trust your cape and it's kind of about taking chances and believing in yourself and doing that your whole life and seeing how far you can fly.

Well, I think it's huge that Amarillo's has allowed people to come in and paint, and not just from the Panhandle, but from all over the world.

They truly have world-class artists they've brought in here.

And the fact that people have given them a wall says a lot because it's not possible without people being allowed to paint on walls.

And so, I think that that's definitely what it shows, that they're willing to have their walls covered in artwork.

(calm country music) - With most of my murals and this one as well, even though I build imagery with it and there's maybe a certain image, but the message that I hope comes through is in the way that I paint.

I don't paint correctly.

I figured out this way through my own experiences and my own some intuition, some background of design, some art stuff.

But really the message that I hope comes through is that there's no really a right way to do something on a big scale.

You can kind of really build something out of your own whatever it is that leads to just your own enjoyment and pushing that as far as it can go.

That's what I hope really comes through, even if that's not immediately apparent in the imagery.

But the way that I paint is really important to me.

(country music) I think the main advice I'd give to somebody that's interested in contributing public art in Amarillo or anywhere they live really is you just gotta get started.

Nobody's gonna open a door for you.

The first mural I painted was in my apartment.

I wanted to paint murals and I'm like, well, I live in a place that has walls.

So, worst case scenario, my landlord's gonna paint over it anyways, so might as well do it.

And that set me on the path to doing things that I can't even believe the scale of.

So really, if it's something you're interested in, you just gotta get started at any scale you possibly can 'cause if you don't, you never know where that door will lead.

(Latin music) - I would say that all of the murals, basically the idea of painting something that isn't a religious picture comes out of the idea of Mexican muralism.

So if you see a mural here that's painted, a good example would be Drew Merritt's cowboy murals.

Those are social realism of our region.

And so, that's a really good example of how we are using this medium to talk about our contemporary culture.

The Mexican muralists are a group of artists who were working in Mexico in the '20s and '30s doing large-scale public art projects, specifically murals.

The most famous are Los Tres Grandes, which is Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.

All three of these artists were working with social themes.

I think the idea comes out of Diego Rivera's influence of the Italian Renaissance.

So he actually went to Italy when he was a student and saw all of the frescoes in Rome, specifically like the Sistine Chapel, and was influenced by that.

Essentially those were illustrations of the Bible and they were used to teach people who were illiterate and show them what was in the Bible.

Well, Diego Rivera loved that idea, but he wanted to show the people of Mexico their history.

So he used that same format to make these murals.

A lot of artists and American artists look to the Mexican muralists for inspiration, and it's specifically during the WPA or the Works Progress Administration, which is a New Deal effort that employed artists to paint paintings and murals all over the country.

We actually have some in our post office in downtown Amarillo.

I do not remember the actual numbers, but it was every town in the west had them almost.

And this was basically putting American artists to work.

But a lot of artists who did that went and studied with the Mexican muralists to understand how to do this.

(country music) - [Narrator] Amarillo was the kind of place where even the museum believes art belongs on its walls.

The Amarillo Museum of Art brings creativity into the open, showcasing public art on its exterior and inviting the community to experience culture from the outside in.

- Yeah, for a long time art maybe was seen as not for everyone, as certain education in order to appreciate it or to say understand it.

It was put in boxes called museums up on the hill, institutionalized.

That model has been broken down over time.

And so, now it's get out and confront people or have people confronted with visual art and experiential art.

And so, it's hard to say what Amarillo or any other community would look like or what it would be if they didn't have an art museum that wasn't available for people to learn and see creative output and critical thinking and becoming familiar with the world around them and other people's interpretation of it.

I think that having museums that are able to influence communities opens people's minds, and so they're able to celebrate and further embrace art in all of its forms.

And so for me, public art is just another one of those opportunities to put somebody else's creative idea out in the world and then it becomes what it becomes.

People see it and they take away what they bring to it.

Everyone sees something different when they approach a piece of art.

And so, I think that just that interaction and that dialogue that happens visually, it doesn't even have to be spoken or even understood, but just having seen it is honestly enough to have changed you.

And so, I think the more of that that we can put out in public, the more it just creates creativity.

(upbeat country music) ♪ We went for each other ♪ ♪ Like a bullet from a gun ♪ ♪ Faster than the sheriff's drawing ♪ ♪ Hotter than the sun ♪ ♪ Didn't see it coming ♪ ♪ Lately I've been on the run ♪ ♪ You know you've seen my face before ♪ ♪ So let me tell you something ♪ ♪ Darling, you fell in love with a famous man ♪ ♪ You've seen my pictures posted ♪ ♪ Everywhere across the land ♪ ♪ And if you run with me ♪ ♪ You've got to understand ♪ ♪ That you're holding on to a dangerous man ♪ ♪ If I'm wanted ♪ ♪ Would you still want me ♪ ♪ 'Cause babe, I'm wanted ♪ ♪ Do you still want me ♪ ♪ I got a bag of money, honey ♪ ♪ And it don't belong to me ♪ ♪ Took it from a man that had it coming ♪ ♪ So you know it wasn't free ♪ ♪ Well, all this meant we're rising up ♪ ♪ And take our horses east ♪ ♪ And if we run into any trouble ♪ ♪ We'll leave them in the crimson streets ♪ ♪ Darling, you fell in love with a famous man ♪ ♪ You've seen my pictures ♪ ♪ Posted everywhere across the land ♪ ♪ And if you run with me ♪ ♪ You've got to understand ♪ ♪ That you're holding on to a dangerous man ♪ ♪ If I'm wanted ♪ ♪ Would you still want me ♪ ♪ 'Cause babe, I'm wanted ♪ ♪ Do you still want me ♪ ♪ Would you head for the hills if they found me ♪ ♪ Would you turn me in for the bounty ♪ ♪ Vultures are circling around me ♪ ♪ Would you die by my side ♪ (calm country music) - [Narrator] In Amarillo, art has always found a way to push boundaries, from the audacious installation of Cadillac Ranch in the 1970s to the vibrant murals that now define the city's neighborhoods.

These public works are more than just creative expressions.

They're milestones in a legacy of artistic innovation on the High Plains.

Our murals build on this tradition, transforming walls into open art galleries that tell the story of Amarillo's people, history and shared dreams.

They connect the present to the past, echoing the spirit of Cadillac Ranch's bold statement that art belongs not just to the museums, but to everyone everywhere.

(country music) Support provided by the Amarillo Area Foundation and the Dr. Kent Roberts and Ilene Roberts Balliett Foundation.