RAINBOWS OF PAINT

Beneath the main entrance to Manitou Springs, a waterfall tumbles over a Technicolor cliff adorned with a female torso and the frowning face of an Indian chief.

On a recent afternoon, the bridge passing over the falls gleamed with incongruous intensity.

A crew of painters had just retired for the day after covering much of the concrete arch with white primer. A tangle of graffiti still graced the hardest-to-reach places, and fresh spray paint already shone in the sun.

Many see this place, known as Graffiti Falls, as a gross defacement of nature. They point out that the towering cascade — officially called Rainbow Falls — was sacred to the Ute Indians and a tourist attraction for pioneers.

To others, however, the graffiti is spontaneous public artwork — a sort of environmental installation in the tradition of artists such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose next project is planned for a stretch of the Arkansas River outside Cañon City.

Whether viewed as vandalism or a kind of underground art, the graffiti at the falls has come to serve as a flag, calling attention to an ailing, out-ofthe-way park that few even know exists.

VISIONS OF A CLEANUP

Noel Wallace, a 37-year-old mural artist with a blond ponytail, was recently commissioned to sketch the falls as they might appear without graffiti.

He’s working for Manitou Environmental Citizens Action, or MECA, a group that wants to clean up the area.

What makes this ironic is that, by his own account, Wallace was the first to spraypaint the bridge some 23 years ago.

“It was a marijuana leaf, just a black outline,” he recalled recently. “I came back a few weeks later, and it was filled in with different colors.”

Wallace said he will begin his sketches with a restored path leading back to the waterfall, like the one he remembers, which is now submerged by Fountain Creek. He may add some picnic benches next to a swimming hole — excluding any of the spray-paint cans, shards of glass or hypodermic needles currently present.

MECA was founded last summer by L’Aura Montgomery, 46, who organized a daylong cleanup at the falls, only to realize the great difficulty of sandblasting graffiti off rock.

What began as an attempt to curb vandalism, however, grew increasingly complicated, as Montgomery became aware of other ways in which the site had been disfigured — from the construction of the 1932 bridge, which cinched the waterfall and cast a shadow over its celebrated rainbows, to the dumping of sediment into the creek during the carving out of Highway 24.

Each problem is entangled with the next. Heavy-duty graffiti-removal equipment cannot reach the waterfall until a new trail is in place. And a trail cannot be constructed until the highway’s eroding embankment is repaired.

“It’s shifted from being a cleanup project to a restoration project,” said Lane Williams, 49, a member of MECA’s board who would like to see the falls eventually serve as the head of the Ute Pass Trail.

“If we spend the tens of thousands of dollars necessary to scrub it down, we need to be in a position to maintain it,” he said.

PRACTICE GROUNDS

To Montgomery, the graffiti decorating the bridge and rocks is nothing like what you’d encounter in a gallery.

“It may be artistic, but it’s not art,” she said recently, peering down at the bridge from a neglected maintenance trail above Fountain Creek.

Some disagree.

“It’s the beginning work of artists that could become acclaimed,” said Jason Zacharias, a local curator who has assembled shows of graffiti art and runs the online gallery Optical-Reverb.

“It really bugged me that here are these people with so much talent, and they get hated on by the community,” said artist Michael Schwartz, 31, who, along with his brother Billy, has organized graffiti shows with Zacharias. “They should be able to sell their stuff, even though they’re not going down to the Fine Arts Center in their three-piece suit.”

The Schwartzes — self-proclaimed Christian graffiti artists who integrate scriptural messages into their murals — operate within a peculiar corner of the graffiti world: the legal one. Because there are no public venues officially designated for graffiti in the area, they must seek out competitive commissions for private spaces.

They say Graffiti Falls is a rare place where beginners may practice their craft. For more advanced artists, however, they feel it’s too obscure.

“How are you going to get your voice out if you're painting in these armpit-of-nowhere places?” said Michael Schwartz.

‘IT’S ABOUT VANDALISM’

Some artists say the outlaw nature of graffiti — its association with vacant, desolate places — is an essential part of its allure.

“There are people opposed to graffiti artists putting work in shows, period,” said Isaac Cisneros, 29, who painted at Graffiti Falls when he was younger and now exhibits his work in shows.

“Graffiti is rude a lot of the time. Originally, it was meant to not conform, to go against the system,” said Steve Menard, 26, an artist charged with defacement of public property in May for spray-painting the bridge at Graffiti Falls. “It’s not just art. It’s about vandalism. It’s about doing things you shouldn’t.”

Menard is one of five people cited at the falls over the past six months, according to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Depending on the level of damage, graffiti artists may face a few-hundred-dollar fine, community service or even jail time.

Because the site lies just beyond the Manitou city limits, it has fallen between the cracks of two law enforcement agencies. Neither the Manitou nor the county police regularly venture beneath the bridge.

“It’s not very well-maintained, and you can’t see it from a normal patrol,” said Lt. Jim Marion of the Manitou Springs Police Department.

Menard, who claims to have been painting at the falls for nearly a decade, said this is only the second time he has been caught.

“For a while, it was the most legal place you could paint that’s still illegal,” he said. “A lot has changed in the last month or so.”

This renewed attention likely stems from MECA’s efforts.

Montgomery said the graffiti that originally attracted her attention now seems like a small part of a larger mission — bringing a forgotten place back into the fold of the Manitou community.

David Johnson, 62, a retired art teacher, recalled visiting the swimming hole as a child and being awed by the sight of more water than he could imagine.

Johnson recoiled at the name Graffiti Falls.

“It’s Rainbow Falls,” he said. “I think it’s best to let Mother Nature be the artist. Nobody wants to see Pikes Peak covered with paint.”

Indeed, graffiti artists themselves often distinguish between tagging natural formations like rocks versus painting man-made structures.

“Nature is off-limits,” said Zacharias, after giving the matter some thought. “But bridges are OK. I think they’re worse when the city throws primer on them.”

MECA PLANS

Manitou Environmental Citizens Action will be asking for support in policing and cleaning Rainbow Falls at the next Manitou Springs City Council meeting — where the group hopes to present sketches of its plan for the park.

Where: Manitou City Hall, 606 Manitou Ave.

When: 7 p.m. July 17

Contact: L’Aura Montgomery, 502-0938