Published: Thursday, March 25, 2010 12:02 PM MDT

Since 1993, the city’s Art in Public Places program has invested millions of dollars in commissioning large-scale artwork for display across Aurora. Historically, the program has drawn its funding from a toll on the budgets for city construction, remodeling and renovation projects that run more than $100,000. Such construction includes projects financed by the city’s capital projects, conservation trust and bond funds. Construction includes public work on golf courses, parks and fire stations.

Even with the economic challenges facing the public art program in the coming months, Miller said staff will still work to fill their mission in finalizing works in progress. In commissioning the painting for the fire department museum, which will be unveiled later this spring, Miller said the Art in Public Places staff drew on input from the city’s firefighters.

They wanted a piece that would encompass the history of the city’s fire department, which started as an unorganized volunteer group at the turn of the century.

It was a message that Illig chose to convey through multiple images.

The depiction of a battered helmet bearing the name of the Aurora Fire Department shares the top of the canvas with an image of one of the city’s oldest fire trucks, while a muted picture of a modern masked firefighter wielding occupies the center. One of the city’s first multi-storied buildings takes up the upper corner, and a worn pair of modern fire boots decorates the bottom of the canvas.

“I want to make sure that what I’m doing has a ring of truth to it,” said Illig, who served as the Art Department Chair at Rangeview High School from 2002 to 2006. Since retiring, Illig has shifted his focus to being a full-time artist, showing his pieces regularly at the Plus Gallery in Denver. “These are based on real, historical events in Aurora’s firefighting.”

It was an approach that resonated with the program’s judges.

“They really loved the way that Peter was able to incorporate a lot of different images into one composition. He is just really masterful at doing that,” Miller said. “That’s really his strength. That’s why they picked him as the artist they wanted to work with.”

As he put the finishing touches on the canvas, Illig said he designed the painting with its ultimate destination in mind. The city’s historic Fire Station No. 1 on East 16th Avenue stands at the site of the city’s first City Hall, constructed in 1907. When it was built, the hall housed one of Aurora’s first fire detection systems, which comprised an alarm bell, a telephone and a chemical wagon.

Illig said that the site’s significance played into his design.

“I was thinking a lot about school groups, because a lot of school groups are going to go through that museum,” Illig said. “As a teacher, I felt like I really wanted to communicate clearly to young people, to have something to say … It was something that the public should get something from, so you can look at this and say, ‘Wow, Aurora has a proud history of firefighting.’”

It’s a value that Illig says will outlast temporary strains on the city’s budget, and one that he hopes will make public artwork valuable and prized for years to come.

“These things will be around a long time. Budgets come and go, but art will be there forever,” Illig said. “Seeing the real fire station is neat, and seeing the art work in the fire station is good, too.”

AURORA | The image of the elephant-headed Hindu god was not yet complete, but students from the Downtown Aurora Visual Arts gallery were already musing about its meaning.

“The elephant especially and the waves — it’s mostly about, I think, nature,” said Angel Salgado-Cabazos, 11, as he inspected the unfinished mural spray-painted on one of the gallery’s central walls. “Is the elephant holding something? It looks like a taco right there.”

Along with several other students from DAVA’s Job Training in the Arts program, Salgado-Cabazos was one of the first of the gallery’s young artists to get an advance look at the 2010 Aurora Public Schools’ Art Educators Annual Exhibit on a recent Friday afternoon.

The upcoming exhibition, which will run until Feb. 26, features work in a variety of media by art teachers in the APS district. While DAVA’s exhibition space is normally reserved for artists ages 7 to 17, the annual show gives APS art pupils the chance to critique the work of their instructors.

Salgado-Cabazos and several other DAVA students took advantage of the role reversal early this year, as they scanned the early progress of a mural by Ameet Patel, an art instructor at the Aurora Quest K-8 magnet school. Patel’s mural centered around an image of Ganesha, the patron of arts and sciences and the deity of intellect and wisdom in the Hindu religion.

Patel, who has contributed artwork to the show for three of its four years, said that the piece would eventually incorporate more figures from the Hindu pantheon.

“My work as of late is always showing the holy trinity … In Hinduism, it’s always the Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva,” Patel said, explaining that the three Hindu gods would be represented as roots, water and flowers in the image. “I always try to show them in an abstract way, and Ganesha makes his way into these pieces in a more representational form.”

But the message of the piece goes deeper than its themes and its imagery — it’s also about its fundamental format.

The outer walls of the DAVA building on Florence Street are regular targets for graffiti, and Patel saw the indoor mural as a way of showing would-be taggers an alternative venue for their creative impulses. The wall painting offers a legal and legitimate forum for vibrant and dynamic designs, a style that the staff at DAVA has pegged as “street art.”

“I wanted to get my students interested in murals, but their interest was kind of lagging,” Patel said. “I thought I would try to really spice it up a little bit, and I introduced graffiti. Suddenly, their interest level went through the roof.”

The topic also served as a homecoming for Patel, who honed his style on the streets of Chicago before moving to Colorado in 2001.

“I got into touch with a younger part of myself,” Patel said. “It’s a legal, sanctioned homecoming, if you will. I was really excited — this whole piece started with the kids.”

Viviane Le Courtois, a program manager at DAVA, said that the large-scale mural is a first for the gallery, and that it may serve as a preview for an outdoor student project.

“It’s the first time someone has painted on the wall. It’s the first time someone has asked,” Le Courtois said. “It’s good for the kids to see — I think it’s a good example for them.”

Patel’s work could serve as a very specific precedent for the students at DAVA. The gallery has been working with city officials to sanction a mural on one of its outdoor walls, and while the gallery has yet to secure final approval, staff is hoping that Patel’s mural will work as a visible first step toward getting the student mural completed.

“(For) a couple of our kids, this is the style of art that they love,” said Sarah Heid, a program manager at the gallery. “We wanted to nurture that, too, and keep it positive. We’ve had a lot of gang tagging and we’ve had this conversation with the kids. Do we consider this an art form, or is this purposefully meant for defacing property?

“We’re trying to have that conversation with the kids,” Heid said.

But the show is about more than specific messages related to graffiti or other media. Dean Duncan, an art instructor at Sixth Avenue Elementary School, said the annual exhibition establishes a valuable dialogue with his students.

“My kids get to come and see some of my artwork. I think that’s the coolest thing,” said Duncan, who has contributed pieces to the show for the past two years. “It’s in their neighborhood, it gets them to come out and also participate in DAVA … Art is actually in the community, and that’s a value to their future.”

Patel added that the forum at DAVA offers the opportunity to fuse passion with profession, and to show his pupils how the arts function and flourish outside of the classroom.

It also helps the instructors keep their skills sharpened, Patel said.

“The great thing about teaching art, I think it ups our game, it challenges us to do more so we can bring it back to the classroom. This is a classic example. I left this back in Chicago,” Patel said, gesturing toward his mural in progress. “And here it was that kids in Aurora, Colorado brought it back out.”

The Conductor is dead and everyone’s a suspect! Join the ASO in Murder in the Mezzanine, a brand new fundraising event at Adams Mystery Playhouse, located in the Historic Highlands—the heart of central Denver, and less than five minutes from downtown Denver.

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For playhouse information, call 303-455-1848