Santa Fe–based artist Jessi Cross brings woodcut prints of roadrunners, bobcats, and more to Flow of Wildlife, a public mural at Railyard Park.
Artist Jessi Cross recently returned from Italy, where she traveled to explore the ancestral roots of her maternal line. The myths contained in that line—from Catholic saints to Greek myths to the cult of Isis—are increasingly central to her work, including the recently installed Flow of Wildlife, a large-scale mural on view in the Children’s Play Area of Santa Fe’s eleven-acre Railyard Park. Presented by the Railyard Park Conservancy’s Railyard Art Project, it is one of two RAP projects being supported this year with funding from the City of Santa Fe’s Arts and Culture Department.
“I increasingly see these myths as lifelines back into the earth and our history as kin of the plants and animals around us,” says Cross. “I’m now seeking to convey this in my artwork by centering the wildlife present around me in the Southwest.”
Created with original, life-sized woodcut prints of local wildlife—including the roadrunner, bobcat, Cooper’s hawk, and cutthroat trout—Flow of Wildlife presents a new, multi-layered mythology involving local bodies of water, flora, fauna, and landscape. The prints are wheat-pasted to the cement walls in a way that portrays them as moving like a river of creatures through the space.
“The vision behind this phase is to enter the community in a public art capacity, bringing reminders of the more-than-human life that, like our bodies, carries both the water of our ecosystem and knowledge of place,” continues Cross. “The wild fauna engage with us both as companions and teachers, rather than just as subjects to be depicted.”
Izzy Barr, RPC executive director, adds, “Flow of Wildlife brings the dynamic relationships between water, wildlife, and landscape vividly into the Children’s Play Area, inviting curiosity, imagination, and connection to the natural world. In this way, Jessi’s work embodies RAP’s commitment to public art that reflects and responds to the local environment.”
Flow of Wildlife is the third in a multi-phased project, Water Mythology in the Contemporary Southwest, in which Cross explores the complex relationships that occur with and around water in the Southwest, with a focus on New Mexico rivers, streams, and marshlands. Three images from the Railyard Park exhibition have been acquired through the New Mexico Purchase Initiative, and will be installed in state and city buildings in the coming months.
Cross is a painter, printmaker, and art therapist working in Santa Fe. She attained a BFA in printmaking from the Maine College of Art in 2000, and moved to New Mexico in 2003. Cross was part of the studio artist community at the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque from 2009 to 2012. She has shown in community and gallery settings over the course of her career, and engaged in community murals in both Maine and New Mexico. Cross is a recipient of the 2023 Artist Grant on Water and Scarcity through the City of Santa Fe, resulting in two solo exhibitions and several talks about her process with the project.
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