The sound of passing semitrucks roared as Province resident Bonnie Del Turco, with an earbud popped in each ear, bopped her head as she moved her paint brush along the side of the traffic box at the city’s busiest intersection today.
“I want to leave something that lifts people’s spirits,” she said, sitting on the corner of John Wayne Parkway and Smith-Enke Road. She was painting what would soon become apparent to be dust behind a running wild horse in her new piece, “Our Beautiful Desert.”
Her paper sketch sat beside her, showing one side of the box will feature a sunny desert fitted with cacti, wild horses and mountains, while the back was similar, but with a rising moon.
It would be the third, and last, art project she would do for the city of Maricopa: “Now I’m taking lessons to learn how to paint portraits, because I want to do all of my grandchildren,” she said.
Del Turco previously painted a wild horse statue in both the city’s first and second batch of installations. “Celestial” was installed near Copper Sky’s front door in 2021, and “Gila River Runner” next to the California Zephyr train car in 2022.
Two other artists have been working on painting boxes around town this week.
Burke previously painted one signal box, named “Friends of the Sonoran Desert” at Porter and Smith-Enke Roads in 2023, and a wild horse statue called “Desert Freedom” near Edison Road and John Wayne Parkway.
Art has been popping up around town since 2021, when 10 painted horse statues were installed as a part of the city’s first arts initiative called Maricopa Wild Horses. In 2022, nine more horse statues were unveiled and eventually installed around town.
The first two wrapped traffic boxes were also installed in 2022 at the Honeycutt Road intersections with Porter and Plainview Roads.
Come summer of 2023, local artists like Senita resident Veronika Leshchinskaya were commissioned to decorate 11 of the city’s traffic boxes in town, either via a combo of digital art and a wrap, or hand-painting them in the sweltering heat.
This time around, the city has ditched the digital art style, and all boxes will be painted by hand, according to city spokesperson Monica Williams.
Bare walls have also been seeing some color. Casa Grande artist Mauriel “Mory” Morejon was also commissioned to paint a mural on the Maricopa Museum and Visitor Center in 2023, and later returned to paint two more landscape murals, one near Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway last April, and another at Pacana Park in May.
“We are excited to see another piece of their artwork come to life in this round of signal box art installations, as well as seven additional artists in the coming weeks,” Williams told InMaricopa today.
