A little more than a week ago I stood in front of 11 panels covering the boarded up windows of Zuni Cafe- the much loved San Francisco restaurant. I had logged some hours and late nights with these panels in my studio, priming them with white gesso, envisioning a design, drawing it out, then painting over the lines with dark outlines. And now here they stood installed 12 feet high and 43 feet down the wide sidewalk along Market Street.
During the next 6 hours, 30 ER doctors arrived to bring color and life to the mural. Brushes out, cups filled with Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White, Payne’s Gray, and brilliant orange made of Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow. It felt like magic to watch something I had only envisioned in my head come together in a day of communal gathering and intention. There was laughter, harrowing ER stories, food provided by Zuni and lots of diligent, detail-oriented painting.
This was a special project. Special because so many people came together with their unique piece of the puzzle to make it happen. The restaurant was looking for something beautiful to cover their sad boarded up windows and offered the space. A group of ER doctors were looking for a project to do together outside the hospital to connect as a community. Paint the Void — an initiative matching local artists with boarded up businesses to create murals as a response to the void left behind in the wake of Covid-19 — was the glue. They reached out to the SF Hospital Foundation to help fund and promote the project and also to me to create the design and direct the paint day. So many different people can sometimes mean trouble or it can mean magic.
I got a chance to speak with the doctors via Zoom call about what they wanted to share with their community through the mural. It was a message of gratitude for workers of all types, for family and grandparents and community around them who all showed up to support them during the pandemic. It was a message of filling each others’ cups and an appreciation for all the different ways to care for one another. From this conversation, I created a design. It follows the story of an ER doctor who cares for a critically ill patient. Because the patient survives and is able to leave the hospital she is able to bring flowers to a grieving friend. Because the grieving friend feels supported, he is able to show up for work at the grocery store and deliver groceries to an elderly woman who can’t go out. Because of this, the elderly woman is able to cook dinner and welcome her tired granddaughter home from a long day of working in the ER — who turns out to be the same doctor from the beginning of the mural. The mural reads HOW WE CARE IS WHO WE ARE.
I believe the opposite is also true. How we DON’T care is who we are. The mural is a call to pay attention to both. How we care and and don’t, and how those pieces are connected to the health of our communities. Every day is a new opportunity to access the caring part of ourselves and, now more than ever, we need to show up for each other.
So here’s to all the people who made this magic happen. What a sweet reminder of the power of what can be created in community.
Be well.
P.S..The mural got some media attention so check out our cameo on the CBS Evening News and the Local SF CBS News. You can also see more pictures of the finished mural here.
**Photos by Paint the Void Photographer Lisa Vortman**