Iowa State University Associate Professor of Art Jennifer Drinkwater Swanson put her final touches this week on “El Puente,” the 20×30-foot mural outside the Perry City Hall, a work in progress since 2016.
“‘El Puente’ is done,” Drinkwater Swanson said Monday. “Now, if it would just hit 50 degrees so I can seal it.”
The mural — el puente is Spanish for the bridge — is connected to the history of Perry and is based on migration stories from Perry’s Latina community that were recorded by Drinkwater Swanson’s friend and ISU Extension and Outreach collaborator Jon Wolseth.
The artwork had its origin in a 2015 grant of $10,000 from Humanities Iowa to the Perry Public Library for the project Latino-Americans: 500 Years of History. Grant funding for the project was also received from the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Drinkwater Swanson’s work on the mural evolved in 2016-2017 as Wolseth’s migration interviews multiplied. Two Perry groups, Hispanics United for Perry and Hometown Heritage, also set up a mobile recording lab in order to document the immigrant oral histories of Perry’s Latino residents, and Drinkwater Swanson’s mural project is an outgrowth of these oral histories.
“This mural is a kind of composite or distillation of a lot of lived experiences of immigrants in Perry,” Drinkwater Swanson said. “‘El Puente’ celebrates the history and culture of Perry’s Latino community, which compromises over 40 percent of the town.”
The mural combines a number of elements, from the corn-husk doll dominating the left side of the mural’s field to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe prominent in the upper right.
“The corn-husk doll was a table decoration at the progressive dinner,” Drinkwater Swanson said, “and the Virgin of Guadalupe is taken from a picture in ThePerryNews.com. Both symbolize a whole way of life that was left behind but also partly brought along and preserved in Perry.”
She said the foreground of the mural shows a field of ripened corn, something common to both southern Mexico and central Iowa, and the center of the painting features a trompe l’oeil involving the Rio Grande River flowing between a harvested field on the right and an urban cityscape on the left.
Drinkwater Swanson, who divides her time between the ISU College of Design and the ISU Extension and Outreach art and design application program, said the Perry mural has been a joy to create.
“I love Perry,” she said. “I love ISU Extension and Outreach. I love being an artist. Love all around!”
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson said he has admired Drinkwater Swanson’s progressive work in creating the huge mural.
“‘El Puente’ is just one of the things that makes me so thankful to work for the city of Perry,” Peterson said.
