The roughly 300 irrigation pipes found by roadsides and canals throughout McAllen predate the city’s rapid growth and industrialization of recent decades.
McAllen’s founding (like the rest of the Rio Grande Valley) has its roots in agriculture. The network of pipes played a key role in controlling and directing the flow of river water to area farmland. Much of the latter are no longer there but the pipes remain. They stand like “invisible structures in plain sight,” said Chris Lash, the program manager for Keep McAllen Beautiful.
They are invisible no more. Brilliant artwork adorns nearly 100 of McAllen’s pipes. It’s part of a years-long effort between city government and Keep McAllen Beautiful to take what was gray and nondescript and turn it into art reflective of the community and the region. This creative form of public art features RGV nature, birding, flowers, folkloric and Mexican themes. The focus of the pipe artwork is to look like the community where the pipes stand, enduring through time.
“It has been a variety,” Lash said of the diverse artwork found throughout McAllen via the network of pipes. “We already have a beautiful city. The public art on the pipes has added to the beauty and enhanced it.”
New Look At Art
The idea of splashing some color on McAllen’s irrigation pipes started in 2014.
The concept at the time was to place tiles on the pipes. The method did add color to the graying pipes but at a costly price tag. The decision came in 2017 to try utilizing local artists to paint imagery on the pipes. It was a more economical and creative effort to continue the initial project. By this time, hike-and-bike trails in McAllen were firmly established alongside 2nd Street and Bicentennial Boulevard, with other trails built next to canals and many pipes in the city.
“The community loved it,” said Lash of the first set of pipes that featured the work of artists. “It was a whole different way to look at art. It became part of the fabric of the community. Some of the paintings are like pictures in a magazine. They’re that vivid.”
Indeed, they are. A folkloric dancer is featured on one busy intersection along 2nd Street with a long flowing dress and big flowers on the base of the pipe. A tall and thin pipe along Expressway 83 has been transformed into a Toltec totem pole in another part of town. Many of the pipes feature RGV birds like green jays and crested caracaras. Ridley sea turtles of South Padre Island fame highlight other pipes.
Some of the artwork reaches high into the McAllen sky and requires scaffolding for artists to scale and paint the top sections of tall pipes. The citywide public artwork has caught the attention of Texas Architect Magazine and the Texas Commission of the Arts. Most recently, the Texas Department of Transportation partnered with the City of McAllen and Keep McAllen Beautiful to have a 408-foot mural painted on an irrigation wall on the intersection of Pecan Boulevard and 2nd.
“It’s bringing public art to the community,” Lash said.
Community-Wide Effort
Keep McAllen Beautiful is a 501C nonprofit organization with a decades-long local presence and works in tandem with McAllen municipal government.
They work jointly on litter cleanup projects that included more than 1,500 volunteers in April 2023 embarking on a citywide effort as part of the Great American Cleanup day. Other Keep McAllen Beautiful projects include painting wooden homes for senior citizen residents, and working with local schools to keep campuses neat and teach students about the environment and community service.
The art on the pipes is another key project and one with widespread appeal and visibility throughout McAllen. Neighboring Valley cities have reached out to Lash and her organization to learn more about the pipes artwork in seeking to replicate similar projects in their communities.
“Do them all over your city,” Lash said as a key piece of advice to other cities. “If it’s not just in one part of town, but throughout a community, it will be embraced and supported, just as we have seen in McAllen.”