Interview with the Prescott, Arizona Mural Mice

Interviewer Tom Von Deck joined the Mural Mice in their Lincoln Street mouse mansion, within Prescott Arizona's Barrio, for a Christmas feast. Maggie Dewar and R. E. Wall are the driving force behind the Prescott Downtown Mural Project - an initiative for democratically designed and elected community murals in the downtown area of Prescott, Arizona, USA. Each mural is dedicated with a play performed by the Mural Mice Theater Company in which the interviewer is a longtime actor.

Mural Mice murals include but are not limited to "Art for All" on S. Granite Street, "Beyond Words" and most recently a mural in Acker Park and the world famous Miller Valley School mural.

The following is an old interview from from Christmas Eve 2008 to shed light on who these Mural Mice are:

Tom Von Deck: Good evening Mr. Wall and Miss Dewar.

Maggie Dewar: Squeak!

R. E. Wall: Nice to be here. Nice to be here. It's been a great evening of food and entertainment.

TVD: Did you have enough crumpets?

RW: The crumpets were fine. The fillets were fine. We enjoyed the escargot. A fine blend of cream and sauces. Delightful. The extra cheese.

MD: I especially liked the cheese part.

TVD: We know about your democratic mural process and the fact that you paint murals here in town. What is your overall vision and how do you fit into it?

RW: The vision isn't to fit in necessarily. It's to open up new potential in a place where we can all go together. In 1994, a bunch of us came to town and opened up a gateway. We saw it like there was a conjunction of the stars at the time. We came in as a bunch of characters who came into Prescott out of some portal or something. Lots of characters came into the picture, including the Mural Mice. But, we didn't know they were there until a few years ago. They kind of jumped out into us. Ever since then, it's been an interesting discovery to know that there are these artistic, creative spirits that exist in conjunction with the human world.

The overall vision is to see that the best part of Mankind is tapped into. That's the creative and spiritual side of Man.

MD: And Woman.

RW: And Woman. The spirit of the mouse is a genetic connection we have with the first mammals. They exist inside of Man. Man's genetic structure, in one way or another, exists inside the mouse. That mouse that we all have is essentially inside of our genes. It's always talking to us from behind the scenes. It's always communicating its message. It's like a little conscience - a little whisperer in the back of our heads. It's intuition - an intuition that, as small as it is, can make things happen.

MD: And we'd also like to see community murals painted all around the city (laughter) and for the community to participate in the process. We find that the murals are a means to communicate louder than an individual voice. We take the many voices of those who wish to share their voices with us and place them on the walls. Through this, we can create a larger community dialog.

RW: The concept is that every single one of us, as small as we are, if we work together, we can get things done. The spirit of the mouse, the mural mouse, is meant to inspire children and senior citizens to get into playing out a role in the collective consciousness of our town. We've found that, in our culture, we've been exposed to the mouse while growing up - in the cartoons, movies, story books and the old fables. The mouse has always played the role of the underdog - the character that has had to stand up to the great powers that be.

We see it as the role of the mouse that pulls the thorn out of the lion's paw. Essentially, we are able to help at a time when the community needs it the most. We're removing the thorn and painting a prettier picture for the town. We gather all these folks and bring them into the picture, something they otherwise wouldn't do unless they had a specific goal in mind. The goal, in the case of what we do, is to place one enormous, permanently placed piece of art... that proves the power of unity and community coming together for that brief moment ... to make something that lasts forever. Our philosophy is that there are many mice in the world, but few know that they are big enough to make a difference. Each and every one of us, coming together, can change our own landscape.

TVD: Is there a social ideal behind this? Is there some ideal social template to work toward?

MD: We can't really say what the ultimate outcome is. Through communication, we're more likely to bridge gaps that exist between us and to establish greater cohesion for the future of the community. Bridging the way we assess our past and make decisions about how our past has led to today. Ultimately, an ideal outcome would be that we would become a more cohesive community because we are communicating.

RW: Every mural offers a theme. That theme offers everyone an opportunity to discuss the things in the piece. It becomes a center point. You may hear dissenting views over its quality and its content and others will appreciate it. That debate is naturally gonna be spawned by art. Art in public places, on public walls - that people have to see on a daily basis - causes people to address the things that they may not take the time to otherwise.

That involves history, and that involves finding something you see in yourself inside of a mural. It may be something that inspires you for something to happen in the future. So, everybody gets into the mixture of perceiving the image. They may not really realize these things that they won't receive for another five years, or even ten years if they're not ready for it. But, the mural kind of encapsulates a whole lot of different ideas and points of view at the same time and holds it for a long period of time. It kind of generates a sort of power outlet that anybody can plug into to draw energy from at times when they don't have it.

MD: Another ideal would be that our culture in Prescott becomes more concerned with art as a means of reaching an end or creating social change in ways that we see fit, whether towards the environment, or towards transportation or even the way we view artists or art in our community in general. The idea would be that Prescott has more outlets for communication that are artistic and positive rather than not existing at all or being overly critical or cynical.

TVD: You all want the two dollar question, now? Ok. The five dollar question. If you were mythic characters, how would the story go? You spoke of the characters earlier. How would the story go?

MD: It would be the story of the mice who find their powers through art. I'm not sure exactly how it happened. They fell into a bucket of paint.

RW: They went through a period when they didn't have a lot of inspiration and color.

MD: They had a great war. When they came out of it, they realized that they were the ones that could help humanity. Anyway, the mice are the helpers of Mankind, or Humankind. They find their power through the paint and they start painting on the walls in the middle of the night. No one knows where these murals have appeared from but, they see themselves in the walls and see their stories being created. The mice hold up the mirror to society and help them to see themselves and help them to see how they can be better.

RW: My two cents on that is that, in a mythological state, in a place of alter egos where you choose a character for yourself to play, the act of the mice appearing at this time during the age, when Mankind has become preoccupied with all its material wealth, goals, power and the struggle for survival, that the mice are meant to pop into the story and keep creativity alive and help humanity to develop a sense of our own place. Every single one of us has to really accomplish or acquire a sense of self.

MD: Mice, if we really were mystical mural mice, have the advantage of being small, unseen, and sort of ignored. That means they're able to go about their business quietly and carefully. Humans don't realize what's going on.

RW: Essentially, the story goes that while the cobbler was asleep and the town itself was asleep, the mice came in and they spun a tale and helped to bring the necessary things back into the cobbler's life. While people were sleeping, this was like falling out of the dream, essentially. Our objective is to see that the dream be placed into the world of reality - the walls - where people can be inspired by them and encouraged to make their own dreams come true and tell those stories. Everyone has a different point of view. It's really nice to see other people take that step of bringing that spiritual world of practical knowledge, love and wisdom into this world.

All in the context of being relevant to where you live, where you come from: If you can work through all that with the characters popping in and out of the collective consciousness, then we can really begin to define what we have to work with as a town.

MD: Making this fantastical idea become real is like, we are the mice and we tell everyone else that they can be mice, too. They can make a difference as mice. As humans, we feel so disempowered. As mice, there's no reason to be afraid of anything because we're already the smallest thing we can be. Already, the odds are against you. Don't back away and be afraid of it.

TVD: Is there a medicinal value of public art on the public consciousness?

RW: Any city in America has government, and the government plays a role of the presiding rulers over the physical realm that they live in. Every town needs to have a spiritual kingship or queenship involved in it, like a priest class. The artist becomes the temple priest who is supposed to deal with the spirit realm and bring it to the world we live in.

When the spirit - the creative, cultural vision - comes through the artist, through the mouse and what not, it shows our leaders and rulers that there's another world that's possible. When we put up these pictures on the walls, developing the history and working with the current culture and projecting a view for the future, we empower them with so much juice and so much power from our collective ideas. That power is literally superglued onto a wall. That power and that energy never really went anywhere. It's in that piece. It becomes a living generator of power so that, when you're low on spiritual energy, you can go to it and draw from it.

Medicinally, murals are a great way, a practical and relatively affordable way, to place something people can take from and give to as often as they want. Having those things on different corners throughout your town brings the spirit of the community up higher.

MD: Murals are malleable in that they can be used to honor your history or honor heroes in your community. Those totems that we build for things that are important to us reflect values that we always have. They become the source of that memory or that idea that you need to keep in your collective mind as something that's important to your community. That way you don't stray too far from your roots or from the things that you value. It's like your vitamins. It keeps all your stuff functioning.

TVD: How about the public space aspect?

MD: It's the only realm that's worth working in, I think.

RW: Public space is certainly something that is available to do with as the public wishes. It should be discouraged that anybody should use it for commercial purposes when it's meant for the relaxation of the mind and body. You go into a public park or you're walking down the street and you're in this place where ... you don't want to be bombarded by these media mechanisms which are tools of deception that get put all over the place.

Public art gives those places a rest and a relative voice, especially if they are grown and developed with the community that they're in. It becomes a problem when too much media, advertisements and such, on marquis, are put throughout the town. It draws energy away from them rather than giving them energy.

MD: Everyone has an opinion of something when it's in their public space, whereas, when it's in their private homes, they are much less likely to assert themselves upon it because.. well I guess they already do... but public space becomes a realm where you CAN have community interaction and it happens usually on a very powerful scale. I think it is important to always use your public space as much as possible to keep the interactions happening and to keep your culture alive through that. You can't maintain a society behind your door. It has to be out in the open.

RW: We also have to always be on our guard to defend that public space. It is meant to be for the minds of the community to be able to rest and not be overworked with things. There's always an encroaching interest on your public space. When you use your public spaces less, they'll take more liberties. Ultimately you start to realize that you have less and less public space. This is all the fault of people neglecting to get out of their homes and investigate their town and community. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. We constantly have to fight to keep it.

TVD: What has your overall reception been?

MD: I think it's been very positive. Very outstanding. I think that people who haven't really taken an interest in it... it's because we haven't hit a subject that hit a sore spot or something that really makes them light up. Otherwise, we see it all the time when people see someone in the mural that was a local person that they knew and they get so excited that they want to share these stories and things they knew about Prescott. It becomes a really interesting outlet for people to share their stories, which I always think are very interesting, very positive.

RW: Communication is what we're losing in our communities as we have less and less vehicles for mass amounts of it with media, entertainment and such (crowding it out). When you place a mural, you're really creating a vehicle that is a means for people to communicate, like leaving graffiti occasionally on walls here and there to tell other people that you're here, that you're relevant, that you're real. You have this conversation that may take place across different walls. With murals, you have permission from the community. They allow everyone to mass communicate.

MD: People suddenly realize that they've been missing something when they see murals on the walls. They don't realize how mundane their physical world is, the way we build with blank walls and concrete. When they see that you can change that into something that's exquisite and relevant... their imagination just starts opening like you wouldn't believe. They start to see a town that can have murals on every wall and colors everywhere. It's really amazing when our vision becomes everyone else's vision. All of a sudden, they see it, and all we have to do is paint and it happens.

TVD: The next question is a freebee question. It's a blank check. Have at it.

RW: I'm really a moose. I always wanted to be a mouse, but I couldn't.

MD: I hope that our numbers keep increasing. Hopefully, the power of what we do catches on before we lose steam.

RW: The community wants to see more of this beautiful and wonderful project. It committed so many resources and united so many people in the community. We hope that the community will constantly keep on building this. We ourselves are just vehicles of this concept.

So far, it has been extremely successful. It has all the potential for continuing for a very long time. It's up to the people to make sure that something like this never perishes from Prescott's existence. There's a lot of ways you can communicate with people through the arts. But public art, and especially community developed public art, is essentially one of the best tools for uniting everybody together in the same space for the same reason, thereby accomplishing true unity, even if in short increments.

MD: Local People: Please come and paint with us - or (place a) mosaic. I think people find all kinds of things that they like to do in the mural project. We hope that it will constantly be a living organism that grows and changes. People can bring what they are passionate about to the table. It can all become part of a larger vision.

RW: Through the power of art, we can change the minds of people who hate and discriminate, who fear and have no hope, who are apathetic and feel that by helping they actually can't accomplish anything, that it's all a lost challenge, a lost hope. What we leave behind for the centuries that come after us will be determined by how we want to portray ourselves. Are we solely a shopping culture? Are we mindlessly, violently wrecking the Earth? Are there people in this country, on this planet, who actually care to make the change and share the stories and develop the exchange that's necessary for the future?

TVD: Quick advice for those who are having recurring visions and haven't realized them yet?

MD: Get out and do it.

RW: Let your inner mouse out.

MD: It all starts with an idea. Everything does. Look what can happen when you actually start moving towards it.

TVD: Thank you. I hope you enjoyed your escargot.

MD: Delicious and slimy.

RW: Squeak.