Blucifer
Denver International Airport is home to a fascinating work of art. When I first visited Denver in 2015, I was mesmerized by the statue of the large blue horse that sat in the median connecting the airport to the city. The horse, a Mustang, was at once majestic and gaudy, lording over the landscape like a surreal sci-fi equine, staring out from the plains toward the Rocky Mountains with its red neon—yes neon!—eyes. I couldn’t decide at the time if the work was a masterpiece or an eyesore, an internal question that I later learned reflected a similar debate that had been going on between the citizens of Denver for years.
The vision of the horse remained stuck in my mind. A few years later, in the middle of writing Many Savage Moons, I decided to set one of the scenes in Denver. Although the primary setting of the novel takes place in and around Charlotte, NC, Denver felt like the perfect place to emphasize Winter York’s (the novel’s heroine) burgeoning rebellion against James Breach, the writer who uses dream magic to hold Winter captive. And naturally, if I was going to set a scene in Denver, I wanted to work the airport horse into the book.
I started my research. To my astonishment, I discovered that the statue—known as Blucifer to locals—had in fact been responsible for the death of its creator, Luis Jimenez. During the making of the statue, a section of the thirty-two-foot tall, nine-thousand pound fiberglass sculpture fell on Jimenez and severed an artery in his leg. He died shortly thereafter. The statue was near completion at the time. Family and friends pitched in to finish the work.
I was stunned by the overlapping similarities between the story of the statue’s creation and the subject matter of Many Savage Moons. Winter York spends the greater part of the novel trapped in the imagination of a writer who, for artistic purposes, has no intention of setting her free. Thwarted in her attempts to free herself from her bondage in the real, she begins looking for ways to escape through the same medium by which she is held captive—the imaginative world of the writer’s mind.
Luis Jimenez was, of course, a very real and very talented artist whose death was both a tragic loss to his family and the art community. One of the forefathers of the Lowbrow and Urban Art movements, his use of bold, bright colors reflects his love for traditional Mexican muralism. Before reading about Jimenez, I wasn’t aware of his influences, but after learning more I better understood why I was drawn to Blucifer in the same way that I’m drawn to a Diego Rivera painting. It’s expressive, stylistic work that isn’t afraid to be loud.
Writing has always been the place that I go to when I want to let the creative side of me run free, the place where the firstborn, responsible, public-school-teacher side of my personality takes a backseat to (or at least works in concert with) the impulses that fuel my creative fire. I’ve always been drawn to art and artists that are expressionistic and bold, from my love of the rock band Oasis to the joy I take in reading a David Mitchell novel. It’s the same reason why I was attracted to a statue of a Blue Mustang rising out of the desert, looking toward the mountains with flames in its eyes.
If you take the plunge and decide to read Many Savage Moons, I hope that you’ll experience some of the same feelings that I did when I first encountered Luis Jimenez’s captivating statue. My favorite works of art have always been infused with an energy that compels. I hope you’ll seek out that energy on your own, whether in creating your own art or engaging with the creations of others.
References: https://www.uncovercolorado.com/blucifer-blue-mustang-statue-denver-airport/