Downtown mural completed

A project in downtown Hot Springs marking the centennial anniversary of the Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club has been completed after almost a month of work.

Italian artist Giuseppe Percivati's idea was chosen from approximately 10 proposals submitted to HSNP Rotary as part of a competition to design and execute a mural on the side of a downtown building.

The primary objective of the mural was to give Hot Springs a gift in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Rotary club, said Mary Nielson, cultural affairs manager for Visit Hot Springs and founder of the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance.

"The process started when Don Gooch, the incoming Rotary president, approached me and asked about assisting with the request for proposals so that we could have not only local artists, but artists from across the state, the country and even around the world, who were interested in putting together a mural that represented the reasons people have always come to Hot Springs, not just now, but historically," Nielson said in a Facebook video posted by the Rotary club titled "Hot Springs National Park Rotary Centennial Mural."

"The challenge for our club was to find something that would leave a lasting mark for years to come in the downtown area," said Gary Troutman, Rotary club member, in the video.

The mural, which depicts two Native Americans of the Quapaw tribe, is based on a painting by the late Charles Bank Wilson, a well-known artist who created an entire series on Native Americans in the 1970s due to their diminishing population. Wilson's daughter granted Percivati permission to use her father's image in the mural.

Nielson said the uniqueness of Percivati's mural idea is why he was chosen for the project.

"Giuseppe's proposal was very unique in that it went back to the very beginning, the original inhabitants, the Native Americans," she said. "It was very different. The majority of others were kind of a billboard for Hot Springs, so his really stood out."

Nielson added that proposals came from all over the country, and Percivati's was the only international proposal.

"So I did a little bit of research about the history of Hot Springs and learned that the Native Americans' tribe that signed the treaty to give the land to the European, at the time, European settlers, the British, were actually the Quapaw tribe. So the Quapaw tribe were the ones that gave the lands to, gave the permission to use the lands to build the city of Hot Springs. My idea since the beginning was to have Quapaw Indians on -- one or two of them, or three of them, on the wall," Percivati said in the video.

"So there is actually very little photography reference about the Quapaw tribe, close to nothing. The only thing, the only really nice photo to use as reference, I thought, was a black and white photo. The one I found on the internet was a photo of a lithograph that later on was used to make a painting."

Percivati arrived in Hot Springs on June 8 and got to work, painting for 10-12 hours per day each day the weather has allowed.

The mural is visible to northbound drivers and pedestrians in downtown Hot Springs.

"He's a young artist who I think was really motivated by the challenge," Nielson said, adding that Percivati celebrated his 32nd birthday while in Hot Springs last week.

A lifelong artist, he has painted murals all over the world including Vancouver, Australia, Japan, Portugal and Pakistan, Nielson said, but never anything of this magnitude. He had finished a mural in Denver just days before arriving in Hot Springs.

"I checked his references and one woman I spoke with, she was so complimentary to him and how warm he was and welcoming to people coming up to ask questions and it's been like that here, too. He's just been so charming," Nielson said.

Local on 07/04/2017

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