Artist Christopher Santer works on painting the mural on the outside of the flood wall in Point Park Thursday. The mural features the railroad bridge with scenes of Parkersburg between each pier. (Photo by Art Smith)

PARKERSBURG — Artist Christopher Santer has been working six days a week, often more than nine hours a day, on the latest installment of the Parkersburg Floodwall mural — even in 90-plus-degree heat.

“I’ve had to leave a couple times, at least for a few hours,” he said Friday. “Around 2 to 4 (p.m.) is the toughest time. Usually (outside of that) I’m in the shade.”

A Parkersburg native, Santer returned to the area from his home in Minnesota more than a week ago to begin his third summer of work on the mural, which he designed. His goal for the month he’s here is to complete the railroad bridge segment that will frame images of Parkersburg’s history.

“I’m going to try to get the bridge, the sky, the piers, all the framework done,” Santer said.

That will span an additional 215 feet from where he left off last year, with the section that frames his aerial image of Blennerhassett Island, which he also plans to finish this summer.

Artist Chrisopher Santer works on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural in Point Park Thursday. Santer plans to finish the railroad bridge piers that will serve as frames for various historical scenes over the next few weeks. (Photo by Art Smith)

Besides the heat, the glare caused by the direct sunlight at certain times also poses a challenge in terms of visibility.

“When I’ve worked through those, I’ve usually just been rolling some base colors, (not) doing any detail work,” Santer said.

Three other artists will be contributing to the project this summer with their own panels.

Parkersburg South High School art teacher Abbie Burge and Caleigh Griffin, who earned a master of fine arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019, are working on theirs now using the polytab process, said Edward Escandon, project director for the mural. They will be painted on fabric and installed on the floodwall, like the mural recently placed around the entrance to Point Park on the wall’s other side.

Santer said he is considering that method for one of his future panels, so he can work on the project back in Minnesota.

These railroad piers serve as frames for images by Christopher Santer and other artists on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Paul Mullins, an art professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who went to college with Santer and has assisted with other portions of the mural, will come to town in mid-August to paint his panel on the wall, Escandon said.

While his work is cut out for him this summer, Santer is already looking ahead to 2024. That’s when the bridge section will be connected to the rolling mountains painted in 2021 and the staff of music depicting the opening notes and words of “Country Roads” will be started on the other side.

“It’s an absolute thrill to be doing this, working on such a scale,” Santer said.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

Work on the Parkersburg Floodwall mural in 2024 will focus on linking the mountains and railroad bridge imagery, as well as starting the musical staff for “Country Roads.” (Photo by Evan Bevins)

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.

(CNN) — Jeffrey Gibson, the Colorado-born, New York-based artist who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, will represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale, becoming the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition in the US Pavilion.

Gibson’s work mixes many traditions, combining techniques from Indigenous beading, weaving, metalwork and more with the formal language of hard-edged abstract painting, Pop Art sculpture. It spans media such as sculpture, painting, installation and performance. He is perhaps best known for suspended punching-bag sculptures that incorporate elaborate threads, fringes and beaded text, as well as large-scale paintings that feature stylized text rendered in boldly colorful patterns.

For his exhibition in Venice, Gibson will create installations inside the US Pavilion, on its exterior and in its courtyard, incorporating elements of performance and multimedia in addition to static works. Through partnerships with the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Bard College in upstate New York, the pavilion will also incorporate educational programming.

“The last 15 years of my career have been about turning inward and trying to make something I really wanted to see in the world,” Gibson, reflecting on his selection for the Biennale, told The New York Times. “Now I want to expand the way people think about Indigeneity.”

Gibson’s presentation in Venice is being co-commissioned by Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo Nation), curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon; Louis Grachos, executive director of the contemporary art museum SITE Santa Fe; and independent curator Abigail Winograd.

“Throughout his career, Jeffrey has challenged us to look at the world differently through his innovative and vibrant work,” Ash-Milby — who is also the first Native American co-curator in the 129-year history of the US Pavilion in Venice — said in a statement. “His inclusive and collaborative approach is a powerful commentary on the influence and persistence of Native American cultures within the United States and globally, making him the ideal representative for the United States at this moment.”

“I have long believed in the ability of Jeffrey’s work to be a force for positive change and to create the possibility of a radically inclusive future,” Winograd added in a statement. “It is my hope that as a global audience experiences his work through the Biennale, they will also find it to be a source of joy and healing, something sorely needed in a world driven by conflict and crisis.”

As is customary, in addition to the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon and SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, the US Pavilion is being organized in cooperation with the US State Department.

Gibson’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the US over the past decade, including in major solo exhibitions at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 2013 and the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 2018. His work figured prominently in the 2017 Desert X Biennial and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Last May, the National Gallery of Art acquired a major piece from Gibson’s “Garment” series, a work that incorporates elements of Native American regalia as well as references to the late performance artist Leigh Bowery; he is also represented in the collections of many major US museums including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Seattle Art Museum and SFMoMa, among others.

The US was most recently represented in Venice by Simone Leigh. Her 2022 presentation, “Sovereignty,” featured large-scale sculptures which “(interrogated) the extraction of images and objects from across the African diaspora and their circulation as souvenirs in service of colonial narratives,” the exhibition brochure explained.