Fairfield artist Preston paints mural for museum exhibit

FAIRFIELD — “He nailed the light of the Southwest. It must have been divine inspiration.”

That’s how Carnegie Historical Museum Curator Stan Plum described John Preston’s mural depicting a landscape from the Southwest United States, which provides the backdrop for an exhibit at the museum. The exhibit showcases pottery and artifacts from a Native American tribe known as the Zuni (also known as A:shiwi), who reside along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

Preston painted a vibrant red and orange mesa in the desert.

“Stan thinks I captured the mesa during the winter solstice, though I think it looks more like a scene from a summer thunderstorm with anvil clouds,” Preston said.

Preston said he had two photographs of the mesa to model his mural after, and he chose the one that was lighter at the top and darker down below to set off the white pottery on the bottom of the display.

Plum explained that this is no ordinary mesa depicted on the mural. It’s a specific mesa, one sacred to the Zuni, who built a village on top of it to hide from the Spanish when they arrived in the 1600s. Plum said the Spanish sent a priest to the village, who converted its inhabitants to Catholicism.

The Carnegie Historical Museum acquired a trove of Zuni pottery courtesy of U.S. Sen. James Wilson, who worked with the Smithsonian to bring them to Fairfield in the 1880s. He said one reason so many items were collected from the Zuni was that people back then thought the Zuni were about to disappear, so there was a push to educate people in the Midwest about these “frontier natives” who might not be around much longer.

The Zuni survived, and Plum is making contacts with some of the tribal elders to get advice on how best to display the museum’s artifacts.

Plum said that the museum has always exhibited “oddities” ever since it was built in 1892. As the museum has undergone a remodel during the past year with improvements to several exhibits and the creation of new exhibits, Plum wanted to show more of the museum’s pottery and to interpret it in a way the Zuni would want. Under the museum’s new configuration, the Zuni pottery exhibit has moved into a display case formerly occupied by taxidermied birds.

Fairfield artist Kathy Tollenare painted a mural that serves as the backdrop to the museum’s Iowa wetland birds display. When Plum was looking for an artist to paint a mural for the Zuni exhibit, Tollenare suggested Preston based on his long history of landscape art.

“I was thrilled with the idea of using local artists to create big paintings,” Plum said.

Preston grew up in Maryland and came to Fairfield in the early 1980s to attend Maharishi International University, where he studied art.

“I remember driving here in August to start school, and it was the first time I had ever seen an anvil cloud,” Preston recalled. “I was blown away.”

Preston said he was fascinated by the sky, and his early artwork here was mostly skyscapes. Over time, his sights have come down, and he’s taken more interest in the land. Today, he enjoys painting rivers and creeks like the Des Moines River and Cedar Creek.

Preston said painting this mesa was the first time he’s tried to capture a landscape from the Southwest, which he’s quickly grown to love.

“If I went to the Southwest, I might not come back,” he said.

Plum said Preston got the landscape’s lighting just right, complete with the pink glow in the morning. Plum is from Fairfield but knows Southwest landscapes well, having lived in Arizona for 35 years, where his wife, Debi, is from.

The public will have a chance to see this exhibit and all the other new and improved exhibits at the museum when it opens over Memorial Day weekend. The museum will be open from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, May 29 and Monday, May 31. Masks and social distancing are requested.