Windows@Incarnation About Artist
About the Artist, Mario Uribe
taken from a Press Democrat article
It’s natural to want to leave your hometown looking a little better than you found it, but few people have found a more visible way to do than artist Mario Uribe, but he didn’t do it alone.
After nearly 19 years as leader of the Artstart public art and apprentice artist training program, he can point with pride to some 50 murals, more than 150 decorative benches and numerous other artworks scattered all over Santa Rosa, all created by aspiring young artists under Uribe’s tutelage.
An artist never truly retires — one can follow the creative impulse for a lifetime — but Uribe stepped down in late January as creative director of Artstart.“I’m 75, and I still have a big bucket list of my own art projects that I want to do. I have ideas and files full of old notes that I’ve been writing for the last 20 years,” Uribe said, relaxing for a moment in his art studio on Art Alley, just off A Street in Santa Rosa.
Jennifer Tatum, Artstart’s interim creative director, put it simply: “Artstart is, and has been, Mario. Mario is like 10 people in one. He has vision, compassion, focus and talent. He holds the bar high for all those who follow his lead.”But Uribe is most proud of the apprentices themselves.“We’ve had 300 or more kids go through Artstart. I don’t think we’ve anyone who became famous yet, but we’ve had quite a few who went on to get degrees and are working as artists and or teaching,” he said.
Uribe’s local art achievements aren’t limited to his work with Artstart. His own projects include a memorial monument in downtown Santa Rosa honoring Sonoma County’s military veterans, and a mural in Santa Rosa’s Roseland district, inspired by the 2013 fatal shooting of 13-year-old Andy Lopez.For the 13-foot-tall “Guardian of the Creek,” a statue of a rainbow trout, Uribe collaborated with the late sculptor Daniel Oberti, and hired some Artstart apprentices as aides.
Now that Artstart is in good hands, and ready to go on without him, Uribe has other plans as a painter and sculptor, he said.“The direction of my own artwork changes and evolves, as it does with most artists,” Uribe said. “But I have stayed during the last 30 years with the circle as a theme. I don’t get tired of that and I probably will continue with it.”
