Many organizations, businesses, corporations and people have come to take up the banner of community. It is the express intent of the People's Mural Project to detail what the issues at hand in the Community of Mammoth are and how the People's Mural Project intends to be a part of the creative and collaborative solutions.

 

   There is a great vibrance in Mammoth Lakes. Coffee shops buzz with community cross-pollination, annual visitor revenue supports the lives of many who wish to call Mammoth their full time home. These beautiful mountains and valleys enrich our quality of life. 

 

      Meanwhile, there is still much to be desired. Many community members complain about a lack of culture, the coagulation of corporations and culture, how many visitors have little to no idea of the issues of the community they recreate in, and more. Many voice a desire for increased artistic presence and as open mic nights and local musicians continue to gain popularity it becomes all the more evident that Mammoth's Main Street, the artery of Mammoth is a highway, with little color beyond street paint and asphalt.

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      In terms of Main Street and tourism, it is the mission of the People's Mural Project to bring life, color, and culture in tandem with education to Main Street. Not only is this main vein of town fairly lifeless, it also serves the over 2 and half million visitors as they zoom up the mountain. Cultural landmarks, historical context, and local businesses are passed by as folks make their way to a wonderland of winter snow and summer fun. 

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   This does not have to be this way. The People's Mural Project imagines the murals it creates to slow the flow of people and allow for percolation and absorption to occur. Local businesses can find new life and embraced by their walls or as created community walls become a part of this town's story. People drawn by aesthetic curiosity will become invested in the community to which they are becoming a part of. In this process, they become more and more likely to invest their money and time in meaningful ways to support a community they have started to know and understand. This will occur through individual or unique interactions but also as part of guided and performative art tours, as well as community events.

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   The People's Mural Project recognizes Dave McCoy among others as having an outsized effect on the Mammoth community today. It is our belief that, from what is clear in his statements and historical records, that Dave McCoy would today be an advocate for the very same goals that the People's Mural Project holds. In each of the mural pillars of the Mammoth Lakes community, the spirit and sentiment of Dave McCoy can be found.

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    We know that Dave McCoy held a respect and reverence for Indigenous populations - their wisdom, their culture, and their rights, that he valued and felt it just to provide support to the underserved Latin(x) community, that he hoped that recreation could be the basis and wholeness of a local economy, not a mechanism of unequal distribution of wealth, that he understood that mining while offering some momentary economic surplus when done with a pickaxe and sift, left economies and environments barren when done with cyanide baths and international mega-corporations, and finally that he understood that this land - from sage blossom to stream, forest to desert, and mountain to glacier, depended upon water to support life here, not elsewhere.

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     It is more self-evident that these issues cannot truly be separated. Any attempt at remediation, reclamation, and/or resolution must account for the intersection of what are systemic problems. The extent to which this community depends on the Latin(x) community to continue on a daily basis must not only be recognized but addressed. The needs of this community must become a greater priority. If one understands recreation to be vital to this community’s health in a full sense, then one necessarily must recognize that this is tantamount to the community dependence on recreation and tourist income. This source of income would not be possible if it weren’t for people working in the service industry. At present over 50% of Mammoth Lakes identifies as Latin(x), a community that is overrepresented in service and low-income necessary labor and underrepresented in local governance, housing and education access and more.

 

      If one understands the beauty of this community’s landscape and wildlife to be vital to this communities health in a full sense, then one necessarily must recognize that open pit mining will destroy habitat for endemic and endangered wildlife, pollute our waterways, deplete our water table, support a global luxury industry that local community members do not benefit from, and cause irreparable damage to sacred Indigenous sites.

   

    If one understands the development of this community to be vital to its health in a full sense, then one necessarily understands that without water there is no room for development of any kind.

 

   If one understands ecological and cultural knowledge and an understanding of the history of this community to be vital to its health in a full sense then one necessarily understands that without a proper and public telling of that history accounting for the erasure of Indigenous people and their life ways, there can be no knowing this place, only misunderstanding.

 

   If one understands and believes they want the best for this community moving forward, then one necessarily understands that they cannot have one without the other. We the people are responsible for our place, we cannot be responsible for something we do not know or understand. We cannot continue to favor tourist industry imbalanced with the expense of resident marginalized immigrant labor, we cannot continue to have environmental enthusiasm coexist with its complete degradation threatened by modern mining, we cannot continue to create an affordable, accessible, and welcoming community while sending away our most precious resource, we cannot continue to call this place home or understand it as it is without making space for those who came before and are still here.

 

   In highlighting these issues, the People's Mural Project hopes to bring light to issues within the community in a way that brings people together. We recognize that not all folks who spend time here feel the same way. We are in the process of changemaking, this means that all voices must come into resonance by being heard and brought together.

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   Without a collective shift in understanding, that is to say, an intentional change chosen by the multitude of autonomous, independent and pluralistic beings - we will not cocreate a future but watch as our potential shared futures fracture and fragment. It is the belief of the People's Mural Project that art, and in particular public art, is an essential element in the alchemy of the collective shift. Public art has widespread potential that we intend to show goes far beyond mere aesthetics, but can bring about a recreation of our concepts of what’s possible. It is through collective art that culture is established and maintained, and it is culture and relationships that will be the bedrock we can rely on when times are tough.

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Written by Zak Young, interim project manager

Edited by Melle North, project curator

Reviewed by Penny McCoy, daughter of Dave McCoy

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