On Process: Looking at the Evolution of the Mural Sketch
On Saturday April 24th we had a BLAST! We built our benches and had some great and tough conversations about the mural sketch. For that reason I want to share the highlights, the learning moments, and how we’re moving forward through some images:
Here we are! Painting some cinderblocks! Peep the lift in the background
And here we are with the finished benches snacking on some Torres Bakery pastries!
And here is the evolution of the sketches:
Here is the first sketch we ever presented. The feedback was mostly about the colors: No blue, more colorful, more flowers
So we tried this! The colors were moving in the right direction, the addition of details in the dress and the circles in the background was received well BUT where were the children? We also had some hard but good conversations about what it means to make a mural about Liberty and Justice. What does that mean for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other Peoples of Color right now? Is it appropriate? Necessary?
So internally we tried this. BUT we slept on it and felt like it reads tooo much like a memorial. What does it mean to have women in toga-like garb leading children? Does it makes sense to keep going with Liberty and Justice at all anymore? Does it make sense to aesthetically? Do these colors actually work? Is this empowering to women or further entrenching them in only being mothers and care-takers? Is that bad? Salina (blogger here!) chose to create one more sketch that moved further into a more contemporary aesthetic with the idea that the figures would be redrawn from photos of real community members and neighbors.
So instead we brought this to the community. I (Salina) will pause here to say that maybe I could have brought the previous sketch too BUT here’s a little bit of insight into what runs through an artist’s brain: I WAS EMBARRASSED. It’s true. I chose to hide that one thinking that maybe we can just pivot in a bigger way it would help get us out of the rut we ran into with the loaded imagery of Liberty and Justice. My creative partner in this project, Eleazar, really liked that sketch so if I were to do it again, I would be more open to showing both and explaining more clearly why I chose to hide the other. Lesson learned! Instead, I brought this guy. What I wanted to show was more contemporary imagery of a woman in her power with children celebrating growth. The machete, for me and in my culture (Puerto Rican and Dominican), the machete is used in agriculture. It’s a connection to the jibaro that I deeply love and hold dearly. BUT when presented to the community it read as violent. SO learning moment two was that my experience of Latinidad isn’t the only experience of Latinidad. And my cultural reference aren’t the same as everyone else’s. Something I know and something we all know but it’s in moments like this where it becomes extremely apparnet. So for the next sketch, maybe no knives? No weapons or weapon like objects. We also had feedback that asked how this is relevant to the community? What’s the point now? Without the very clear and maybe too-overt message of liberty and justice, what are we doing? Is it clear? And so learning moment three is to prepare to be extremely vulnerable and remember that this isn’t about me but about the community. In this work, it is very very easy to hold on to only the comments that focus on how your work can change. And yet here we are asking the community what they would change. Sometimes, I forget that as an artist working in community that I might get too-attached to a work in progress and I need to give myself time before jumping into another rewrite. Wooh! Big learning all around! The stuff to keep was the colors! More children! Bring back the flowers! And add more activities like children sharing with each other or reading together! We were asked to represent and model the stuff we want to see the next generation do alongside the strong figures that are there to support them through it. SO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!
So here is where we are. You can click on this image to open up and see what each thing symbolizes. One of the pieces of feedback was a need to have something that explains the work. Maybe a plaque in the future. We’re hoping to get two youth to model for the middle stand-in figures right now and have a community member scheduled to model for the figure on the far right. We have some work to do! AND we’re nearing the final days of editing and moving into hammering this all down on the parachute cloth. Next week we’ll talk more about the literal process of moving from sketch (like this) to outline and painting.
Until then!
