Columnist Susan Snyder: Ferraro is part of mural majority

Friday, March 16, 2001 | 5:31 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Most Boulder City residents know Connie Burnett-Ferraro more by title than by name.

She's "the mayor's wife."

But it might not be long before Mayor Bob Ferraro's constituents are calling him "Connie's husband" and calling her "that Boulder City muralist."

When the mayor's duties are long past, Connie Ferraro's name will remain on buildings throughout town as the signature on a series of public murals depicting Boulder City history.

Ferraro's handiwork appears on the facades of two Boulder City businesses and is scheduled to begin appearing on a third later this spring. She finished a mural inside Hoover Dam's new High Scaler Cafe employee cafeteria a couple of weeks ago, and one Boulder City home has a Ferraro mural in it. "I'm very laid back as far as being the mayor's wife. I go to the functions, but I'm very quiet," Ferraro said.

But there's nothing reserved about her public paintings. They are huge. Her first was a 14-by-40-foot mural covering the rear wall of Heidi Lee and Glenn Reed's rock shop, Where On Earth?

Lee and Reed sponsored a mural contest last year in hopes of putting a local artist's work on public display and promoting a little Boulder City history. They supplied the paint, scaffold and other materials and awarded the winner $200.

Ferraro submitted a drawing. Won. And then she wanted to back out -- not because of the artistic challenge, but the physical one. Ferraro suffers from Meniere's Disease, an inner-ear ailment. It causes severe vertigo.

Walking across the room can be difficult, Ferraro said.

"I wasn't crazy about the scaffolding," she said. "I was scared to death. I had to use a ladder and then crawl across the platform on my hands and knees."

And for the first couple of days she painted with one hand and held on to the scaffold with the other. Her Meniere's went into remission, and the job became easier. Then she noticed how many people stopped to watch.

"It's strange having all the people walk by. I feel like I have to perform," Ferraro said. "You don't want to mess up with people watching."

The rock-shop mural shows the dam, a couple of the high-scalers who built it, and a woman and children from the "Ragtown" settlement where workers' families lived.

It also shows a desert tortoise, a miner's burro and a jackrabbit, bighorn sheep, lizard and the red-to-purple peaks that give Boulder City its dazzling backdrop. Images of the art deco angel sculptures found at the dam site sit on either side of the mural. The statues are Ferraro's favorite aspect of the dam.

"I wanted them in there as if they're protecting Boulder City," she said.

Her second mural spreads across the front of the Boulder Bowl near City Hall. And the third, at the dam's employee cafeteria, shows a rendition of the view employees had through the window of their old cafeteria on the other side of the dam.

Phyllis Hall, owner of Edie's Flowers on Boulder City's main drag, says she has asked Ferraro to create an Impressionistic-style scene showing the women of old Boulder City.

Ferraro says she already has a few ideas for that one.

"It's so exciting. I have a new career at 63," she says. "Boulder City has lots of walls, and I'm ready."