'It's Kind of a Weird Message': The Fraught Story Behind Those Giant Paintings Off Central Valley Highways

California’s Central Valley boasts some beautiful landscapes, often missed by drivers bombing down I-5 between Northern and Southern California. But if you’ve ever driven to, say, Salinas or Carmel, you may have noticed some giant art along the way. Scattered throughout the area, off many different roads, are hundreds of brightly colored plywood cutout scenes of Americana.

Bay Curious listener Nick Loey drives these roads regularly and has often wondered about these giant art pieces — some of which are over 20 feet tall — sticking up in random fields in remote locations.

“They have a very distinct style, sort of like pop art, that depict what seem to be farmworkers doing jobs in the field or sort of just posing with their pets or farm equipment,” Loey said. He wants to know “whether or not there’s some story behind that set of art. Is it an exposition for a specific artist? Is it a history piece that you’re supposed to admire and enjoy as you’re driving down the freeway, or is it something more?”

Answering Nick’s question took us into artist studios and farmworker communities. And like so many things, this art means different things depending on who you ask.

“Farmer & Irrigator”

If you’ve never seen these art pieces before, I can’t stress to you how large they are when you get up close to them. But driving by, the static cutouts almost feel interactive. From far away, it can look like figures crouched in the field or standing, surveying the day’s work. It’s only as drivers get closer that they realize the figures aren’t real people at all.

One of the most iconic of these giant artworks is “Farmer & Irrigator,” found in a field along Highway 68 in Salinas, near an agricultural education center called The Farm. It depicts two men facing away from the highway and toward the landscape. One is standing, leaning his foot on a shovel digging into the dirt, while the other kneels, a handful of dirt in hand, as he surveys the view. Closer to the road, an older man dressed in plaid and a straw hat holds two cabbages.

John Cerney, the artist behind “Farmer & Irrigator,” along with about 150 other plywood cutout paintings of this style in California, worked in agriculture for close to seven years. He created the art as an homage to the farmworkers providing the country with fresh produce.

“My first job was picking strawberries when I was 15 years old,” Cerney said. “I know how hard the work is. They get up early and it’s a rough life. They’re still underpaid. They work hard and I was happy to get that first gig and elevate them and draw attention to them.”

The trouble is, many farmworkers living in these agricultural communities and driving by the art every day don’t feel the same way. That’s in large part because most of the figures are depicted with white or light-colored skin.

“Yeah, for me, that represents the growers,” said Lauro Barajas, regional director for the United Farm Workers in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. “It’s a nice painting, but it’s kind of a weird message.”

It has been almost 100 years since white farmers worked the land in Salinas, Barajas said. Today, immigrants, most of whom are from states in southern Mexico like Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, are the ones doing the backbreaking labor of producing food for the country. And they don’t see themselves represented in this artwork.

Although some of the subjects in Cerney’s installation are based on photographs of Latinos, the ones that are most easily seen by the public don’t appear to be. Some community members noted that farmworkers work hard to sustain their families and the country’s food supply with their labor, so it’s disheartening to see white or white-passing people take the credit in these highly visible art pieces.

“Since the inception of the UFW, when you do see farmworkers in art pieces, they are usually pretty positive,” said labor-rights activist Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farmworkers (UFW) alongside Larry Itliong and César Chavez. Huerta drove by one of Cerney’s paintings recently.

“But they’re not farmworkers; they’re the farmers. They are the growers or the owners of the land, not the people that are actually doing the work,” Huerta said.

Cerney confirmed this, saying that the owner of the land commissioned “Farmer & Irrigator” in 1995, directing Cerney to paint himself and members of his family alongside the fieldworkers.

The tensions of public art

When I told Cerney that some members of the farmworker community don’t feel seen in the installation, he was saddened. He never intended to misrepresent the farmworking community and said that he is just trying to make a living as an artist, something that’s difficult to do nowadays. He uses the commissions he receives to subsidize the work he’s truly passionate about making.

“If it were left to myself — even though I grew up in this farming area and I worked in the (agriculture) industry myself for eight or nine years before I went to college — I wouldn’t have necessarily picked that,” he said. “It’s just that they asked me to do it, they were paying me, and I’m a hired gun. I did what they wanted.”

Nick Loey, who first asked about this art, wondered if they were part of a “history piece.” While not intended as such, in many ways they are a testament to the age-old discrepancy in power between landowners who are seen and laborers who are not.

Though Cerney’s intentions were good, the thing about public art is that once it’s out there, the artist ceases to be part of the equation. The work is no longer about intent, but rather about the impact it has on those viewing it.