Our Home was approximately a month long project in 2019, in which professional architect Laura Dutto asked a handful of artistic high school students to collaborate and create the first public mural in the Layette, California.
I spent a lot of my early years in a tri-city we called 'Lamorinda'. While it was small and peaceful, it was also often seen as boring and uncreative. While I loved to spend time in the beautiful hills, the community was more focused on sports and academics then they were art.
'Our Home' was a way to pull out all the lovely hidden subcultures within our community. To begin, everyone brought a page showing examples of their own art, idea pages, photographs, etc. In doing this, we created a giant mood board as seen on the left.
This project had two initial drafts. This original one was drafted by our leader Laura Dutto, but after an examination I believed the composition needed to be more vibrant in color and concept.
I pushed for more abstract objects, bright colors, and overall a bit more vibrancy to bring to our small town.
Not everything had to be naturalistic and straight forward, I wanted something with deeper meaning. So as we painted, we began adding vibrant colors subtle details to make the final piece a little more personal.
The final product was celebrated in a local art museum where it was celebrated with local artists playing music, the unveiling of the final product, and a closing speech given by me, which ended up being quoted in the local newspaper.
