This Mexican-American artist in Boise navigates activism, success in mostly white field
A lot of weight rests on the slender shoulders of long-haired skateboarding artist Miguel Almeida.
As a Mexican-American artist in Boise, a city that is 86% white and 9% Latino, Almeida must navigate his activism and celebration of culture while blazing a career in art in a white-dominated state.
Almeida, 30, was born in Nampa to Mexican immigrant parents with long careers in farm work. The family moved to Marsing in Owyhee County for 12 years after Almeida was born and later moved back across the Snake River to Canyon County.
As a teenager, Almeida worked alongside his cousins at Symms Fruit Ranch in the Sunnyslope region near Caldwell. His experience in the fields and stories from his farm-working relatives would go on inspire Almeida’s art.
“Nobody in the family was an artist,” Almeida said. “We didn’t know anyone who was doing anything like that.”
Studies at University of Idaho
When Almeida was considering college majors, his father encouraged him to pursue something more practical than art. Maybe engineering or architecture? he suggested.
A hobby artist all his life, Almeida agreed with his father to some extent — he didn’t know anyone who had created a career as an artist — and he decided to major in 3D modeling, illustration and animation. He attended the University of Idaho in Moscow.
Toward the end of his college career, Almeida realized he didn’t want to work in animation, and he began to draw and paint again.
After college in 2020, Almeida moved to Boise with his wife, Breann, and two pugs, Ham and Sparky, and started his career as an artist and muralist. It was slow going at first, with Almeida needing to take on five or more freelance projects a month to make ends meet.
After five years of scrambling, Almeida was offered a part-time job as an illustrator at the Boise Co-op. There, he is in charge of illustrating the labels on Co-op-made products. He illustrates the two characters, a chicken and a squirrel, that represent the store.
“The job at the Co-op was something I never expected,” Almeida said. Now he could be more selective of his freelance projects.
Celebrates Mexican culture in colors
Almeida wants to leave a piece of himself in every project he creates.
“I want to represent who I am,” Almeida said. “And show kids who grew up like me, that there are people out there you can relate to. At the end of the day, representation inspires. If you don’t see yourself being represented in the arts where you live you might not want to pursue it.”
Almeida celebrates Mexican culture in the color pallet he uses for many of his pieces. His work comes in bursts of pink and yellow. He paints a paletero, a person who sells popsicles from a push cart, wandering through the streets looking for young customers. He paints brightly dressed farmworkers picking crops in the fields. He paints large pink and yellow flowers which tower over a small child in a yellow mask.
Farmworkers are rarely represented in artwork, Almeida said. “(Farmwork) is not celebrated, and it’s kind of overlooked in art,” he said. He said Bobby Gaytan, of Meridian, is an artist who does depict farmworkers in public art.
Each year he raffles off an original painting. and all of the proceeds go to the Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance for farmworkers, he said.
Almeida designed, drew and donated the first logo for the Manejando Sin Miedo (Driving Without Fear) campaign by Poder, for free, said Estefanía Mondragon, the executive director.
Poder is an Idaho-based Latino immigrants advocacy group that has been advocating a bill in the Idaho Legislature that would give undocumented immigrants the option to obtain restricted drivers’ licenses, making it legal for them to drive in the state.
Almeida was also part of Poder’s recent efforts to bring together artists and activists to promote positive change in the immigrant community in Idaho.
Paints Latinos, farmworkers
One of Almeida’s passions is public art, and he tries not to shy away from depicting Latinos and farmworkers in his city art projects.
Almeida recently painted a mural at Meridian’s Tully Park skate park. In a video by the city of Meridian, Almeida said his design was inspired by calaveras, decorated skull figurines used in Mexican celebrations of Day of the Dead.
“Somebody who’s Mexican probably would look at the mural and know [that] somebody who’s Mexican painted it,” Almeida said.
He has not yet had someone tell him that his work is “too Mexican,” he said.
Mondragon said Almeida is a bridge between whites and Latinos.
“He can be doing work in very white spaces, and still brings in his culture,” she said, “and I think like he’s probably one of the best in Idaho doing that.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
