Somos Semillas (We Are Seeds) #1
During the summer of 2020, Salina and I (josh) began meeting each week to plan what would become seed project. We weren’t to sure what to do, we just knew what we could do because of the COVID-19 pandemic—no in-person gatherings, workshops, meals or events. No public art interactions as we knew it and spent years developing in our work. What do we do?!
We spent the rest of the year trying to figure that out and by November we had a sketch for our first year: virtual workshops, zine publications, community member meetings and a temporary mural at Plaza Centro—the new business center at Duke and Chesapeake Streets.
Before we even called ourselves seed project, we were talking about this mural and using seeds as a metaphor for who we are as a vibrant and powerful Southeast community. We started compiling images that we like that could be good inspiration—past works from Salina and I, vejigantes (a folkloric character in Caribbean festival celebrations) and plants. We also realized we couldn’t paint a mural together in person. We decided to buy a roll of canvas to split between the two of us to paint in our own homes, which we would them adhere to the mural wall.
digital sketch by Salina Almanzar
photo of Dominican vejigantes
painting detail by josh graupera
After spending some time thinking through what we wanted to create, we ordered canvas and paint and began to focus on the wall: the south wall of Brother’s SuperMAX Grocery Store.
