Feel to Heal by Elena Salinas
What inspired you to create this piece?
I was inspired by a very heavy winter in which I found a lot of healing in the total release and digestion of my emotions. I think a lot of us are taught to suppress our bluer emotions, which is inextricably connected to the suppression of nature in our society. It’s like we are taught to reject a part of our inner nature.
Whenever I’m with the Earth I have such an easy, uninhibited way of feeling. I have a specific place in Rock Creek Park where I go to cry, (which funny enough is a sewage outflow point). It feels so easy in nature to find peace and quiet.
I was also reflecting on how the land that [the Marion St Intergenerational Garden] was on used to be a parking lot, and how the land has healed since.
What was your process like when creating this mural?
The physical process started with a drawing that I’d made in the early spring before visiting Marion St for the first time, and then I re-sketched it to include different plants and animals and bugs from the garden. After that, I sketched it on the wooden panel. The sketching on the wood was a learning process. I started painting the mural panel in the garden, which was really fun but I was getting distracted in the best way possible with kids coming up and painting little things and having conversations. It expanded my appreciation of the garden, interacting with the community there.
What feelings or ways of looking at the world do you hope this mural will inspire in children, youth, and communities when they engage with it?
The main message is to not be afraid of your emotions, especially the really heavy ones. When you don’t confront them is when they get stuck in really nasty ways. I think there has been a shift in this anti-indigenous society to really embrace healing, and in that sense begin to decolonize and embrace our full humanity. Working in a school now, there are so many more “safe spaces” - this definitely wasn’t the case when I was in school. I’m always amazed by how aware kids are of their emotions now.
In your opinion, what is the benefit of including art in kid- and community-driven green spaces?
I think the process of making art with others makes it really easy to have conversation and build community. It’s kind of like parallel play - you’re locked in but you can freely express whatever is on your mind without making eye contact or following normal rules for conversation. And you can kind of come in and out of it as you feel. Something about it feels really natural. Art spreads joy, I love when I see murals or graffiti around the city. Something to add color in the gray.
Being in nature when you make art kind of elevates the therapeutic nature of it. But even if you’re not in nature when you’re making art,you are still connecting to a deep nature that is within everyone. There is no real boundary between us and nature, which I hope art can help us remember.
what are your hopes or visions for public art and green space in the future in DC?
More of both! I’ve been thinking about how schools should be cornerstones of community - right now so many schools in DC are turf, concrete, and a gray wall. And both art and green spaces are so critical for the development of happy and healthy humans.
I would love to see more funding for artists and community gardens from the city. Gardens should be accessible and easy to find. Once people start reconnecting with nature, including their human community, it has a great ripple effect on society. And you begin to notice the pieces of nature that resist and surround us, even in the cracks of the sidewalk.
I think there is going to be a higher need for guerrilla gardening and art in the next few years. There is no way you can exterminate art or nature; these are two things that will keep us hopeful.