Cinco de Mayo celebration reunites retro yard art: Kenny Be's Yard Arteology
The study of neighbors through their lawn decoration...
Photo by Kenny Be click image to enlarge
Before Cinco de Mayo was a weekend party, Colorado residents celebrated their Southwestern heritage through yard art. The five popular pieces pictured above were usually purchased as a set at local garden stores and placed in the yard in two groupings. The more prominent lawn display was the serape hombre standing alongside the burro pulling a cart of petunias. In a separate flowerbed, typically to the back of the yard, the siesta sombrero hombre was seated with his back to the cactus. Sadly, sometime during the 1970s, the unsophisticated sentiment implied in these sculptures started to offend and many were destroyed.
It is now impossible to see a full display anywhere in Denver: But in honor of this weekend's Cinco de Mayo celebration, we've brought these scattered displays together. Page through below to see how each of these sculptures has been assimilated into mainstream yard art culture across the city, from Five Points to Athmar Park...
Photo by Kenny Be
Siesta Sombrero in Five Points. The sombrero-wearer taking a siesta above may have escaped his Southwestern setting, but he still enjoys leaning against a thorny rose bush in place of the prickly organ pipe cactus for his rest.
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