Untitled (Mountain Lion)

Kayley Quick is a Flagstaff-based artist, muralist, graphic designer, and educator whose colorful, imaginative artwork brightens public spaces throughout the community. She earned a degree in Art Education from Northern Arizona University in 2009 and has taught art and graphic design at Flagstaff High School. Working in both traditional and digital media, Quick creates murals, illustrations, and public art that celebrate creativity and community connections. She has received numerous local honors, including multiple Best of Flagstaff Artist awards, and is the founder of Monster Universe, a creative arts business.

Kayley is inspired by the natural world and the vibrancy of the city of Flagstaff. The scenery of the area surrounding this installation, an urban intersection, is changed dramatically through a colorful intervention of stylized wildlife. Quick selected the mountain lion as a symbol of strength and resiliency, themes which are particularly resonant for the artist in the years following the global Covid-19 pandemic. As a graphic designer, Quick focuses her attention on line work before incorporating color and textures. Patterns of vegetation, including neighboring aspen trees, are represented in the artist’s design as well, becoming abstract and fanciful along the sides of the boxes.

Quick designed the artwork on an iPad using Adobe Draw, emphasizing lines and colors as important elements of her artistic process. This offers an excellent opportunity to help students explore the connections between digital design, visual art, mathematics, and technology.

The original design was presented during a Flagstaff City Council work session on November 30, 2021. During that presentation, city staff explained that Quick intended the mountain lion to symbolize Flagstaff's strength and resilience through the difficult preceding 18 months. This provides valuable insight into the artist's intentions and the historical circumstances surrounding the artwork.