Best Mural I’d Like to See Transplanted to a More Prominent Place
Jw Caldwell’s “Time Heals All Wounds”
The mural by Las Vegas artist Jw Caldwell that stretched outside the Tilting the Basin exhibit on Commerce Street Downtown last year was twice as big as its first incarnation the year prior at Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, nudging the question: How big could it be? And where?
Forget, for a moment, the Downtown murals and street art. Caldwell's painting — the phrase "Time Heals All Wounds" bookended by cowboys riding dinosaurs — would be spectacular on the side of a large building along the I-15 or 215 Beltway, where they cut through town.
His humorous wordplay on existential angst is refreshingly direct, but with layers to unfold. Time Heals All Wounds (still up on Commerce Street) speaks of humility. Time may heal all wounds, but time also runs out. Time makes us extinct. The dinosaurs are long gone, and, as Caldwell says, “cowboys aren’t really a thing anymore.” We're all just riding this planet until our time is up.
But, rather than be morose, the artist's colors, style, and lettering settles instead somewhere in the realm of a calming haiku, a Johnny Cash song, or philosophical contemplation. Caldwell has a tendency to get to the meat of things that way. Chew on this, the mural seems to say, and then, Lose your illusions. But have fun, too. Kristen Peterson