The story of Wood River High School custodian Johnny Servin is featured in a Sun Valley Museum of Art (SVMoA) exhibition honoring the impact of essential workers that is now on display through June 8.
SVMoA invited printmaker Christie Tirado to participate in a residency in the summer of 2021 wherein she interviewed a variety of Valley-based essential workers and their families during a free bilingual printmaking workshop she conducted. Participants were invited to respond to a question: Who has been essential in your life during the pandemic? Tirado then made linocut portraits of seven of those essential workers alongside their stories.
Created in the Mexican graphic tradition, which has played an important role in shaping North American sociopolitical discourse, the artwork depicts Servin’s wife stocking grocery store shelves. Servin’s wife was one of the first people in the Sun Valley area to contract COVID-19 in March 2020. Her oxygen levels were dangerously low and she had to be transported to a Twin Falls hospital for care. Servin said it was “a really scary” time for his family, although his wife would eventually recover.
According to Servin, COVID-19 has been a game-changer for his profession, with the need to wear masks, disinfect spaces and surfaces and follow enhanced cleaning protocols.
Tirado, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has focused much of her work on celebrating her family’s cultural heritage. Recently, she has aimed to highlight the critical, yet often unseen, work of Mexican-Americans in the United States. She created her “America’s Essential Workers” series with that concept in mind as she looked to create art depicting the COVID-19 pandemic.