Polvo de estrellas y flores
2020’
Made with Acrylic Paints
Family is important.
Right around the time I had started looking into anchoring into a home after years of travel, I met a student who was on her way to becoming a somatic therapist. We were part of the same dance tribe and had met many years before, but somehow started connecting over art. I had told her how one of my dreams was to paint a Mural some day, during one of our walks around Brooklyn. She mentioned how she had a wall available in her home. We made an agreement, and we went ahead and started on the mural.
Community
Since we were part of the same community, it was also easy to start incorporating a lot of new ways of playing with creativity. Allowing in Meditation, Intuition, and channeling. After chatting with my friend, who turned into a client, we realized a similar theme that wanted to be anchored in around family. It was important to her too, and she wanted a mural that symbolized her growing family.
Meditation
What came in when I was meditating with the Mural, was the symbology around stars and plants. I played with different ways of incorporating these relationships into the painting. The tall steady tree, etherical yet able to grow upward, knowing its way. The shimmery path of starlight making its way onto the earth nourishing her, a solid leafling at the center symbolizing the child within the family.
Materials
It was my first Mural yes, not my first time with clients. Within a week I had contacted my friend back to share with her the sketches. In that, we made the seedling a bit bigger, and we agreed that the price I gave her would also include the materials. With that final, money received, I went ahead and started looking at different art stores. I went to Blink since at that time they had a special teacher promotion. I researched all the methods around keeping the mural safe after it’s made, asked a bunch of random questions at the store, and eventually landed on a spray-on no gloss varnish. I bought some new brushes, got the local store acrylic, and googled how good acrylic is for mural-making to confirm once again before leaving the store with three tubes.
One Tourquise, one White, and one Black.
Simplify
Thankfully, My Friend had the ladder, I got there realizing that would be very helpful to have. I got to become friends with her dog for a bit, and she left me to it. I sketched out the shape of the piece by gracing the lines first. Feeling into the feeling of the mural through the curvature of the shape of the piece. I’ve had enough experience through my other profession as a VFX artist to know how to morph an image from a smaller document into a larger space. Lots of eyeballing it, laying out colors first, going back to my reference to stay true to the piece, and simplifying everything so that I would stay happy making it.
Memories
Some of my favorite memories from this piece are the times I got to connect with my friend. She would leave me at her home as she ran to do her errands. As someone who was relatively new to me, being given access to someone else’s home in that way was really new for me. It felt so new, that it left an impression on me forever. I still have a lot of cultural things that I need to shed before being completely okay to let someone stay in my house in this same way. Outside of immediate family. For me, it was bold and courageous of her to do that, for her, it might have been something normal. These are some of my favorite things to reflect on after making a mural, to see the ways that it changed my life as well.
Anchor
In Total It took roughly three days to complete. The third day was to come back to add the varnish once the piece had dried. The family was happy with it, they seemed super excited to receive it. Months later when I went back to check in on them and ask how they were doing, the father of the family mentioned how the mural became an anchor post for him, after coming back from his office. It helped him anchor right back into his family. I felt really touched by him in sharing that with me. Another gift that comes in after dedicating attention to art. It’s never an expectation and every single time it blows my mind away. Way beyond the money that comes in with it. A generous gift of course.
I’m unsure of the status of this mural. The family has now moved out of NYC into a part of the U.S. with more access to nature, and where the somatic student, now a somatic therapist, can thrive. I wish whoever is still in that house gets to receive from it. And, if it gets washed away amongst the tides, I let it go like a Tibetan monk. It still lives on in my heart, and here on this digital gallery. Enjoy.
