A Q&A with Jim Covarrubias

An alarming number of people who live in Phoenix don’t know the origins of their own city’s name — but painter and storyteller extraordinaire Jim Covarrubias certainly does.

Back in the Year of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 1867, white settlers arrived in the Valley of the Sun and found a complex, long-abandoned system of canals — the ruins of an extensive desert civilization built along the banks of the Salt and Verde rivers. They founded a city here believing that it could be replicated like a phoenix rising from the ashes. (The name the Akimel O’odham use to talk about those people who lived here in Phoenix — the Huhugam — means “those who have vanished,” or “those who have gone before,” or simply, “the ancestors.”)

As an avid student and teacher of the American Southwest’s history, Covarrubias understands that America is but a recent blip on the history of this land. His work reflects it. The paintings fill his massive studio at an industrial event and venue space in downtown Phoenix.

With his remarkable artistry and themes of politics, history and human affairs heavily present in his work, we thought the prolific Covarrubias would be an interesting — if unorthodox — interview.

He also dabbles in the written arts. He wrote an opera called “Kokopelli, the Legend” about the dissolution of the Huhugam. And in books that compile his works, he includes short poems that accompany the paintings.

Besides being an artist and poet, Covarrubias is a Vietnam War veteran who chairs the Piestewa Fallen Heroes Memorial — an annual ceremony honoring Native Americans and other groups in the U.S. military.

The event is coming up later this month — it’s held every March 23. It’s the date that Lori Piestewa, the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving in the U.S. military, was killed in the Iraq War.

And given the United States’ terrifying carpet-bombing of Tehran is unraveling a new fiery, apocalyptic destruction at the expense of the American taxpayer, his thoughts have a haunting resonance.

Covarrubias is the kind of guy who still uses a flip phone, which he snaps shut with authority after ending a call. He does this after his girlfriend, Helen, calls him. “She owns all this,” Covarrubias chuckles about the huge studio. “I love her — not just for that.”

Here’s our Q&A with the preeminent Southwestern painter, lightly edited for clarity and concision.

I think I am more of an experimenter than I am a true conclusive artist. Some people view themselves as being complete.

I’m still exploring what it is to create. And I’m trying to even write more about that. But the reality is that I love the experimentation of art and something new.

I don’t want to say I can paint flowers all day or landscape all day. I want to see: How can I reveal more of my emotion? I’m not trying to impress anybody. I’m trying to make something that means something to me. And I love it when people connect with that.

And I think that’s what art gives us. It gives us the ability to explore in our own mind what we’re feeling and not just say, “I love it” or “I hate it.”

The most famous painting in the world was done by Picasso. He was commissioned to do a painting for the World’s Fair in Paris. During that time there was a bombing in a Basque city by Franco and the Nazis who were stationed in Italy. It just shocked Picasso, and he painted “Guernica.”

You’ve got people who are dismembered, horses disemboweled, a baby dead, carried by his mother who’s got these huge tears coming down.

It was still too iffy for a lot of folks, who thought, “what does it mean?” Now we realize what it means is the empathy that the true sentiment about what an artist feels and the tragedy. It gave us all a license to paint something that wasn’t beautiful, something that was maybe more powerful.

Not all artists do something that is that graphic. But it helped us open up to whatever we wanted to paint, basically.

This war is going to cause suffering on the average American family.

And there’s already six families that are grieving. That’ll never be the same.

We’re not going to get out of this unscathed and we’re all going to suffer because of it.

It’s a very wise person who knows how to lead. And you have to lead with your humanity, not with your courage. And I think that’s what’s lacking right now in the top echelons of our government.

It has changed so much for art and artists. The messages used to be kind of about control. Now, they’re about new information that make the art very personal. And that’s the most important thing about it — it used to be that art was made to impress people, or made them feel like they’re part of something beautiful.

Now, it’s message-oriented. And I think that’s the most important part of new art. I think graffiti is really important. It affects more people than something that would be preaching to them.

I went to a concert for a Navajo friend of mine with a guy who wrote the books on me, Micheal Sarda. When we left there, we said, wow, we love that music. It was fantastic. But he said, the only thing that was lacking was a story. So he encouraged me to write a story.

And I thought about the Indian background of the history of this area.

I thought, you know, we have all dramatic heroes that encountered the white man. And we kind of remember Geronimo and Sitting Bull and those people. But what about a story when there was no white man here? What was life like? What would they do? How did they solve problems? How did they look at the environment?

So I wanted to include those messages into the opera.

It’s about a drought. It basically was a message about two things. It was a message about migration, and a message about people having to leave en masse from their home and start new again.

It isn’t an easy thing for me to be the chairman of this and having to deal with the families that I get calls from — people who want me to hear what they have to say. Sometimes they’re angry — it’s fear and anger and love and grief all combined together in different ways.

The reality is that everything evolved. And we can make a romantic movie about cavalry fighting against Indians and all that. But the reality is that Native Americans are part of the modern world, just like a Chinese-American or Irish-American.

With Native Americans, you know, we’re involved in the modern day. I mean, I worry about whether my wife and I are going to go to dinner on Friday night. And, you know, it’s not like I’m thinking I have to go and kill a buffalo to feed us.

And even as a veteran, there is no repeat of history. No matter what anybody says, history doesn’t repeat Itself. It morphs into whatever new situation there is. And it might be some of the commonalities from another conflict, if you will.

But people who wear the uniform aren’t all the same either. So it’s like, we tend to simplify it. Are you patriotic or not? But the reality is that all of us have a sensitivity to life and to trauma. And we’re affected by it in many ways that we don’t even realize.

Decorated war veteran — now what the fuck does that mean? It’s not a good thing to say. Just say, “A guy who tried to do right most of his life and fucked up a few times.” That’s what I want on my headstone.