Mac-arte.blogspot.com Website Review

tank in the remote border community of Presidio, Texas, facing its southern neighbor Ojinaga, Chihuahua. Along with two other excellent articles about this project, from John MacCormack for the San Antonio Express-News offers a view of the small border town delineated by the meandering Rio Grande. Just beyond, the Mexican sister city of Ojinaga — many times bigger than the Texas town — sprawls along the foothills of the Sierrita de Santa Cruz.  On one side of these crumbling hills is a gridwork of housing for Border Patrol officers, surrounded by chain-link fencing and topped with barbed wire. On the other side of the hills is the city’s water tower, a lone white tank that juts above an otherwise unas*uming and figured out ways to fit their lives discreetly into the rugged desert landscape.  A month ago, a face began to appear on the water tank. She emerged over the course of two weeks: a Latina woman, clutching the stem of a red rose in her thick hands. Her brow and cheeks are lined with age. Her gaze, de*p but benevolent, looks out beyond the Rio Grande into The sudden appearance of this face felt out of sync with the pace of the town, where not much changes fast. The change was monumental enough to warrant a field trip by Presidio’s elementary school. Each day for a week, teachers paraded their students up the hill to see the face and asked them, “¿Qué piensa? What do you think?” The mural is a gift from Mexico to the site of its smallest consulate. Amid the hyper-politicized rhetoric that surrounds the border, it was a small binational gesture reminding those who reside in the margins that they are not forgotten. The Mexican government commissioned Los Angeles muralist Miles Mac, known as “El Mac,” whose work has appeared in the border cities of Juárez and El Paso, as well as myriad other places across the globe, from New York City to Agdz, Morocco.  El Mac had never worked on a federally sponsored project, and if he had concerns about it feeling propagandist, those fears were immediately as*uaged. “It was the kind of project I would do for