In Veterans Park in Tulelake, just over the California line, there is a mural painted by muralist Chris Young. One of the people on it is Murray Bolesta's mother, Eleanor Bolesta. "The mural is in the Veterans Park there," Bolesta wrote, pointing to the City of Tulelake's own website, where it fills the homepage, "and features my mother, who was the only woman in World War II to win a homestead allotment there."
The homesteads carved out of the old Tulelake lakebed built the farm country of the Klamath Basin. Bolesta's family story is part of that history, and it is painted on a wall where the whole town can see it.
Bolesta grew up here, left, and has come back. "I'm a new homeowner in RY and a professional artist from way back, working from my home office here now," he wrote this August, answering a note on the Running Y residents' list that asked neighbors for interesting stories. "I'm originally from this area."
He has sold fine-art prints under his own name since 2004, after decades in Arizona, where much of his best-known work was made. "My brand is simply my name," he said in a published interview. He describes the work plainly. "Through photography, I bring my artistic vision of a chosen scene to life, employing an intuitive sense of composition and a refined skill in tone and color." The purpose behind it, in his words, is to "celebrate and preserve our natural and cultural heritage." He names Ansel Adams as an influence and credits his wife, Agnès, with believing in the work.
These days he puts it in five words: "Lens-born, artist-shaped, uncommonly yours."
He is candid about the business side. "The difference between a hobby and a business is steady income," he has said. "Selling art is hard. Selling art photography is even harder, due to tech advances. The barrier to entry is zero."
The heritage he keeps returning to starts with that mural, and he has not left it on the wall. Bolesta is helping lead an effort to revitalize Tulelake, and he wrote the Shared Vision Plan for the proposed Tulelake Cultural Visitor Center: a multi-agency hub planned for 305 Main Street, across from the newly expanded Veterans Park, with foundational funding already secured from the Modoc Nation and from CSU Chico's North State Planning and Development Collective. Its stated purpose, printed under the title on page one, is "celebrating our natural and cultural heritage." It is the same sentence he uses for his own work.
His photographs on these pages are local: the family farm, the lava beds at Schonchin Butte, Mount Shasta, rime ice on an old house. A photographer who came home to the place where his mother's story is painted on the wall.
See more of his work at murraybolesta.com.
