a community moment

Last year, my neighbor’s shed got tagged and it gave me an idea. It got covered up shortly after, but the colors didn’t match and I wanted to do something about it.

Fast forward to June of this year, and I saw my neighbor outside painting over it to match the original color. I approached her and asked if she was planning to do anything else to the shed and if she’d be interested in a free mural. I explained that I’m an artist, I live in the neighborhood, and I’ve been thinking about asking for a long time. 

She was down. Immediately we started thinking of ideas, I told her I like to paint nature, and she mentioned the possibility of a kelp forest and I knew I had to do it. I don’t often paint things like that, but it was intriguing to me, and I knew it’d push me. 

It took me a couple of months to actually get together the spray paint and the confidence to get started, and last week I finally went over to paint. It was so fun and cool and challenging. I am a true novice to spray paint, but was determined to use it for this project, because she and I had talked about it as a practice space and I just needed to let it be difficult and still worth trying. 

I spent about 3 hours painting, and in that time a handful of neighbors stopped by to chat or thank me for beautifying the neighborhood a little. It felt so good to be part of this collective of people. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for a year and a half and recently moved to a different house in the same neighborhood and one of my hopes is that we really get to know our neighbors and spend real time with them. Painting this mural was a step in that direction for me. 

In this weird phase of the world where we’re all so disconnected, I deeply want to keep doing things like this: spending a few hours painting and chatting and being seen by other people as I am learning a new skill. As I am exploring pushing my art more and working part time elsewhere, it is a good reminder that my art is intended to be communal in as many ways as possible. I want to be part of my community, and show up as a creative in this space and this shed mural was a perfect start to that. 

I added my Instagram handle to the mural, in hopes that it’ll lead to more interest in my business, and my neighbor offered to get a water proof case mounted with a QR code for my website so that more people have direct access to working with me. It really shows me how the community can work to see that she is just as enthusiastic as I am about my business growing more. 

So yeah, talk to your neighbors, it might surprise and inspire you.