School custodian’s passion for art inspires
Jason Enjady puts the finishing touches on a brick walkway, part of a four-panel mural dedicated Friday to the North Star Elementary School. The mural shows the transition from infant to high school graduate, and the final panel features the city of Albuquerque. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — We are deep in a conversation about the power of art – how it inspires, enlightens, enriches, how for as long as Jason Enjady can remember it has been both his passion and his ballast, how for eight months he pondered the intricacies and the message he wanted to convey in his latest project – when duty calls.
“Mr. Jason,” a small boy says as he walks up to us with a look of urgency. “The toilet paper roll is empty.”
And so it is back to reality.
Reality for Enjady is his job as a custodian at North Star Elementary School, a beautiful (and very clean) campus on the toniest northern boundary of Albuquerque. The married father of four daughters has been with Albuquerque Public Schools for 10 years, much of that at this school.
Always, he has been an artist.
That’s his passion. Being a custodian puts food on the table. But art puts joy in his heart.
Jason Enjady may be the custodian at North Star Elementary School, but these days he’s also known as the artist in residence. He just completed a massive mural for the school that hangs in the library and is visible through most of the main building. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)
And that heart is mighty big. Rarely does he ask to be paid for his art. Most of it these days is for the North Star kids.
“My hope is to encourage the kids to find something they love to do,” he says. “That’s not necessarily art, but whatever they figure out on their own that gives them that spark.”
Drawing came easily to Enjady, known for his intricate symbolism, each stroke of the pen or brush or dry-erase marker (more on that later) possessing more meaning than what the eye first sees.
An ink drawing he did for North Star staffers of the school’s mascot may look like just a wolf, but look closer. The nose is a child and adult, the snout a telescope, an ear a child’s hands. The fur splayed on either side spells out the name of the school.
“I gave them this design so they could use it to raise money for field trips,” he says.
And they have. The drawing is being used on T-shirts for sale to benefit the school.
Enjady’s latest gift to the school is something he says is really the school’s gift to him. About a year ago, one of the school’s architects asked Enjady whether he would be willing to paint the four massive canvas panels that hang high on the two-story-tall walls of the library. The panels, which measure about 9 feet by 7 feet each, are visible through glassed-in walls of the main building as you first enter.
Enjady jumped at the chance. He asked for no money.
“I told them, get the canvases,” says the 36-year-old uber- exuberant Enjady, who speaks as if every sentence should end in an exclamation point. “Take them down and let me at them. It was such an opportunity for putting art on the wall. That means more to me than money.”
The mural he created takes the viewer on a journey from toddler through high school graduate, from the universe to the world in which that graduate will make his or her life.
The architect, like everybody else at North Star, has seen Enjady’s talent in the dry-erase works of art he creates at the school. Using markers and his hands to smudge the colors just so, and guided by ideas the kids give him, he graces a large whiteboard hanging in the school cafeteria each day with all make of animal, landscape or character.
But he has rules.
“I tell the kids, ‘You guys must respect the artwork and not touch or mess it up,’ ” he says. “And they never have. I also tell them I won’t draw if I hear they’ve been misbehaving or not doing their homework. And they never do.”
Enjady says he hopes to be the artistic inspiration he never had. One of three brothers raised by a single mom, he had a somewhat rootless life because her phone company job required them to move frequently.
Friends came and went, and sometimes they weren’t particularly the right friends. Art was his constant companion.
“I drew every night,” he says. “I’d draw things for people. I’d get pens and draw on people, like fake tattoos. I’d draw on tennis shoes or anything I could get my hands on.”
He had no formal art training, except for one airbrush class he took mostly to use the equipment he could not afford.
But art has remained pleasure rather than profession. In terms of the latter, he’s been a barber, wildland firefighter and construction worker before he settled into the job of school custodian.
Perhaps someday he will make a living with his art. He has thought of getting into the tattoo business. He’s in discussion with another school for another big art installation.
For now, he says, he’s happy just getting to share his passion for free.
“I’d rather get known than rich first,” he says. “If someone notices my art and it inspires them, then I have succeeded.”
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.http://ABQjournal.com/letters/new
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