Interviewing levee muralists

PSJ’s 45 Degrees podcast discusses thrill of art

Please enjoy a sneak-peek excerpt from the upcoming 45 Degrees podcast episode with artist Jennifer De Groot. You can listen to the full podcast episode March 17 by searching Voices of Pueblo on your podcast platform! In the meantime, listen to the first two episodes of 45 Degrees with Cynthia Ramu and Shannon Palmer.

Rory Harbert: “What was the importance of making sure to include the indigenous aspect of that (the mountain)?”

Jennifer De Groot: “So, I am a white woman of German, French and British heritage. Moving to Pueblo has been amazing for me. Going from the Maryland and Pennsylvania area has opened my eyes to the variety of culture that I have yet to experience. For me to put a mountain up on a wall, that’s one thing, but to name it after an indigenous term that I don’t identify with and wasn’t raised with, that’s another.

I felt like I really owed it to the communities around me and my friends who are indigenous to give it the proper naming, and to take their opinions into account, and honor the original creation stories. Not the colonizers who just came in and named it the Spanish Peaks, because this is not Spain, we do not live in Spain. There are communities, the Ute and the Comanche, who still live there and they still call it Wahatoya and I wanted to be very respectful of that during my process. And I wanted to be very self-aware of myself coming in as an outsider.

Harbert: What drew you to ‘Wahatoya,’ or the Spanish Peaks?

De Groot: When I first moved here, I did a hiking trip up the west peak of Wahatoya. We left Pueblo at 4 am to make the drive. Since we were driving due south to reach the peak, I got to watch the sunrise unfold across the faces of the mountain. The beauty of that moment just stole my heart, it was so early in the morning and I didn’t get any sleep the night before. Almost everyone else in the van was asleep, I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to as I saw that sunrise unfold. It was so beautiful. I just hope that my design conveys the joy and the love I felt in that moment for what was unfolding in front of me. And I had just moved to Pueblo, so I was seeing big mountains for the first time in my life. That was probably my first mountain sunrise, real mountain sunrise. The eastern faces of Wahatoya were lit up with these amazing gold and pink hues, the western side was still in the deep purple shadow, kind of like the purple mountain majesty. So that all really went in to my color choice, also I wanted to represent my queer community with a symbol of pride with nature.