One of Bio-Logical Capital’s partners, Urban Villages, recently broke ground on an exciting sustainable, mixed-use development in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. The 13-story tower, situated on a triangular lot adjacent to historic Civic Center Park, will bring a hotel, 40 micro apartments, and dining and event space to the neighborhood.

The Urban Villages team has worked closely with the nonprofit Civic Center Conservancy, which manages the park and advocates for the neighborhood, to ensure the building will be an asset to the community that complements the historical heritage and cultural energy of the nearby Capitol and County buildings, Denver Art Museum, and Denver Public Library.

In that spirit, Bio-Logical Capital has partnered with Urban Villages on an interim installation near the project that rethinks the role urban development can play in a community. Although construction sites represent the promise of something new, they are often disruptive—blocking sidewalks and creating noise pollution and dust that burdens the people and businesses in the community. But this doesn’t need to be the whole story. These projects can also present the opportunity to create beautiful temporary spaces that support community function and celebrate what’s to come.

The interim installation, located between Bannock and Acoma on 12th Street, is comprised of urban lots that have been seeded with a mix of native grasses and wildflowers to create a shortgrass prairie system that will return each year, providing habitat for pollinator insects and birds and introducing a seed bank of native species to the urban environment.

A wooden construction fence bordering the green space features a new mural by local artist Nicholas Ward, who partnered with us in 2019 to create the stunning murals on view in Larimer Square and at Larimer Uprooted. Playing with proportion, form, and shape, Nicholas’s work illustrates the complicated yet beautiful intersection of humans, land, and culture—a theme central to our urban landscaping work.

We pulled Nicholas away from the installation for a few minutes earlier this month to ask him about his work, the new mural, and creating public art in collaboration with the local community.

Q: Hi Nicholas! To start, give us an introduction to your work. You don’t only paint murals, right? What other mediums do you work in?

That’s right, the Larimer Uprooted project in 2019 was my introduction to mural painting. For the most part, I paint on larger-scale canvas—my favorite size is in the three-foot-by-four-foot range. I like the detail I can get on things at that size.

I also do woodblock printmaking. And I do some drawing, which used to be my primary medium, but I've become more and more invested in the whole world of color—it’s fascinating to me, and I’m still very much learning. I almost always use oil paint because the color is richer than acrylic paint.

Q: Would you say you have common themes in your work?

Almost all of my work on canvas is a comment on the Hollywoodization of the Wild West. I do these figures that are not quite surreal but play with proportions to create a different perspective. They sort of push the bizarre to create a sense of unreality, to shake people out of a more consistent, Hollywood view of the West.

Q: Do you have favorite Hollywood Westerns that inspired you? Or is your work more of a critique of those movies? Maybe a little bit of both?

A little bit of both. I definitely grew up watching some of those movies. It's such a romanticized period— as a child I was very attracted to it, especially growing up in Iowa. My family had The Outlaw Josey Wales on VHS, which I watched more than a few times. But now my work is more a critique of that romantic Hollywood version of the West. Hollywood warps our vision of ourselves and what we're doing in so many ways. I'm using the West as an example of that.

I'm really drawn to the uniform and props that make the Hollywood version of a cowboy. You can put on a cowboy hat and boots and a Western shirt and, to anybody walking down the street, you’re a cowboy. So much of the role is the uniform. I like to use large canvases because I can bring out details in the clothing.

*"The Sound of Death in Things", oil paint on canvas, 2022, by Nicholas Ward*

Q: When you're planning a painting, are you thinking about the story behind your figures? Are you creating characters and narratives in your head?

Yeah, for sure. All the themes I create are imagined, even down to the faces I end up painting. Familiar things can sometimes show up—structures I’ve seen on the street or my friends’ faces—when I’m not intending them to. But I don't use specific references, because I like creating an extra layer of unreality. When I'm sketching, I sort of use a faceless circle for a figure’s head. Then, when I sit down to paint, I let the characters and the narrative come out on their own, versus trying to force something.

Q: I imagine creating murals is quite different from working with canvas. How do your process and style change?

My murals end up still within my style. For this new mural, Lilly from BLC reached out to see if I'd be interested in making a bid. She gave me a loose description of the project and some ideas about what they wanted to do with it, but no specific design direction. I initially presented something that was a bit safer than my paintings; it can be intimidating to put something more bizarre, something that I would be attracted to, out there to be considered by a group. But Lilly, who's familiar with my canvas work, encouraged me to incorporate more figures, like in my paintings.

Q: Do you like having that bit of direction? Or do you prefer the freedom of working on your own?

I do love the freedom of painting my canvases. I sketch every morning, and every once in a while, something good comes out of it that I decide to put on canvas. And then, as I paint, I think about what the painting means and develop it as I work, until it gets to the point where I decide I’m confident enough to take it off the easel and hang it up somewhere.

Murals flip things around a bit. At least for me, the mural process involves coming up with some sketches and loose color ideas and presenting them as the beginning of a concept that will evolve. There’s an extra layer of pressure involved because you're presenting an idea that's not fully fleshed out yet—you have to explain it, and people might not envision exactly what you’ve sketched out.

Q: It sounds like murals are more collaborative, and you have to be open to taking feedback.

Yes, and I actually really enjoy that aspect. I like bouncing ideas off people and seeing what comes out. It's something I sorta hated when I was in school, but I've come to really appreciate putting myself out there and being vulnerable to critique. There’s a lot of value in it.

Q: Tell us more about the new mural that you're installing. Can you describe it for us?

It’s going up on fencing that’s part of construction staging for Urban Villages’ new building. The fencing is six feet tall and will be behind what's going to be a pollinator garden. For the design of the mural, I asked Lilly for a list of the plants she’ll be putting in the garden. The majority of the mural will be really enlarged, stylized versions of those plants, to create a harmony of repetition between the growing medium and the 2-D medium behind it.

Q: How are you approaching the scale of the mural differently than you would a three-by-four canvas?

The paint choices are definitely different. Over time, I've amassed a collection of paints and pigments that allow me to tackle more nuanced color on canvas. But the amount of money it would take to get that many different colors in gallon jugs requires keeping things more simple. The medium guides those decisions.

And I enjoy that challenge. I’ve been working with more curated color palettes in my canvas paintings, experimenting with something called the Zorn palette. It’s a palette of oil paints that’s more or less a black, a red, and a yellow, but you can create all these amazing colors with it. Blending just three colors ends up creating something beautiful—very earthy and harmonious. It’s a fun challenge to create different colors with a smaller set of paints. For this mural, we bought around six paint colors, I think. My plan is to mix those colors to set the figures a little bit off from the flora we’re working with. So the colors will be in harmony with the flowers around the mural but will also create a separate space to rest your eyes on.

Q: Murals are public works of art. How does knowing the mural will be something that people walking down the street can engage with influence your approach?

I was psyched out doing my first mural for Larimer Uprooted. Painting in front of people and having more of the creative process exposed intimidated me at the time. I was used to retreating to paint—not even my family saw my process. But I really came to enjoy the interactions I had while painting at Larimer. There weren't too many people coming up—most just walked by. But often kids would stop their parents to look, and that started a conversation. That’s a beautiful thing about kids; they'll stop and really enjoy it and soak it in. All the people who stopped were very supportive and excited about art happening in their neighborhood. That's something I don’t get selling canvases. The mural is a way to contribute to the community and feel a part of it and put more art in the public sphere that everyone can enjoy.

Urban Villages wanted this new mural to have even more of a community involvement aspect to it, which molded the final design. I wanted people who aren’t as comfortable with a paintbrush in their hands to still feel welcome and able to contribute to the project.

*Nicholas with his Larimer Uprooted mural completed in 2019*

Q: So people from the community are going to be painting it with you?

Yes—there are community painting days. The flora aspects of the mural are going to be painted by the community. I’ve outlined silhouettes of plants from the pollinator garden and curated a selection of paints that I'm basically going to let people have their way with. I’ll just be walking around, helping and answering questions.

I wanted it to be a creative experience but make sure those people who maybe don’t feel so natural with a paintbrush feel comfortable participating. So it's sort of set up as more of a coloring book— I've done the outlines and the community is going to help fill them in with whatever colors they see fit.

Q: So it's not like a paint by numbers—they get to choose the colors?

Right. Which I thought was really important because I wanted the mural to truly be something made collaboratively with the community—not just the community carrying out my specific vision. And then I’ll come back in later to paint the figures and add more detail.

Q: Does the mural have a title?

Not yet. But I set aside a section of the wall for all the contributors to sign, to memorialize the day and the people from the community who came together to collaborate on creating something beautiful for their neighborhood.

Learn more about Nicholas Ward