#5: My mural at World Trade Center + other updates

Yeah, that still doesn’t feel real.

Hi! I let more time pass than I initially intended on this self-imposed quarterly newsletter schedule. We are now a bit overdue for a check-in, so let's get right INTO IT and talk about murals first.

Here’s the final version of “Joy In Leisure” which I teased in my previous e-blast!

The last time we chatted, I showed you a preview of "Joy In Leisure," the summer-themed mural I created for Silverstein Properties at 1735 Market Street in Philadelphia. I wanted to push my characters for this one and quite literally did, with big proportions, cotton candy clouds, and an orange sky evocative of childhoods spent sipping Sunny D on the sidewalk. I had a LOT of fun throwing around my chunky chisel brushes for this concept. Wrapping up that project would've been enough to make me feel proud and accomplished with another mural under my belt this year, but then something magical happened.

The folks at Silverstein came in from NYC to take a tour of the floor and see how the murals they commissioned came out. Over lunch, I geeked out with them about New York - catching a show at Central Park's SummerStage, historical preservation on the Upper West Side, predictions on whether Penn Station will ever feel functional, etccc. They seated me in front of my mural for an interview, and midway through our conversation, I was asked if I'd be interested in creating a mural for them at their other location, this little old place called World Trade Center. Needless to say, I made myself available.

Before this commission was on the table, I had a trip booked to visit Queens in August. I try to visit for a week every summer to witness how fast the city moves (I still won't pay for a subway ride with my credit card though, thank you very much) and traverse the streets of my childhood. Summers as a Queens kid meant trips to Flushing Meadows Park with my mom and sister. We'd make giant soap bubbles at the Hall of Science and slurp up drips of Ice King Italian ices from our fingers at the Q23 stop, praying for the bus to come and save us from sweltering city heat. These Flushing Meadows memories populated my brain over the course of my August trip. Between telling myself, 'the steel rings of the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows will be hard to paint' were little whispers saying, 'they will definitely go in the World Trade mural.'

I taught a five-week sketchbook workshop to seniors in the illustration department at UArts this fall, and throughout the course I told them that every little thing you ingest makes up the well of inspiration available to you during art making. Memories open investigative questions, experiences are thematic fuel. I noticed how a teenager's shoulder touched his ear as he slouched at Washington Square Park. I still see New Yorkers wearing socks with Adidas slides on the subway. I learned that yellow warblers are among a handful of birds that pass through the nature reserve located in the southwest corner of Flushing Meadows Park. All of these details appeared in my final concept for my World Trade Center mural. 

A photo for each day I worked on “Queens is For the Girls”

It's hard to describe the soupy pool of emotions I experienced each day on the site painting "Queens is For the Girls." Eighty years ago my grandmother boarded a ship alone from Puerto Rico to New York and found a job as a seamstress in the Garment Industry to make ends meet. The week of the mural I waited for the E train to take me to the very last stop so I could work on an idea I made up in my head on the 79th floor of 3 World Trade Center. How bizarre and incredible it is to map out the path of my lineage this way, leading up to this point where my living gets made making art in the city. Grateful, grateful, grateful. My grandma passed away years ago, but I kept wishing that I could tell her about this incredible opportunity. She was a gifted and creative sewing maven even in her off-hours, making dresses for kids in the neighborhood for free. I know her spirit was keeping me company. I know she and her husband, my firecracker Papa, were watching me paint these dreaming teens sitting on top of the globe. 

I painted the final line work for the mural on September 11th, and the immense, painful weight of working at WTC on this specific day was not lost on me. Ominous grey clouds hovered over the windows and cast shadows on my canvas. Beams of auburn sunlight poked through every couple of hours, little reminders that hope perseveres even on the darkest days. At five o’clock I cleaned up my supplies and fought to stop adding more tiny details, telling myself with each brush stroke, 'I'm done now. No, now I'm done. One more and I'm really done.' The sky grew darker and darker, and I squinted at my mural with a mix of self-doubt, satisfaction, worry, and hope pounding at my chest. ‘Please let this be good enough,’ I thought – for whom, I could not tell you. As I turned the corner toward the elevator bank, finally ready to call it a day, I saw the double rainbow New Yorkers across the boroughs were treated with that evening. It was the perfect cap to that September day and marked the end of this beautiful, blessed project I got to call my own this year.

A mural highlighting a zest for food & nutrition

As you read this, I will be on a 15-foot scaffold drawing the lines of my last mural of the year. The three-wall concept will live at Vetri Community Partnership, a non-profit providing nutritional education through cooking from their headquarters in the Callowhill neighborhood of Philadelphia. This is my first time working with support from Mural Arts (hooray!), and what a blast it’s been soaking up the buzzy, vibrant atmosphere of VCP HQ on this project so far. My rockstar project manager, Juliet Vinegra, has swung by with paint cans, encouraging words, and much-needed photos and videos to document the process. It’s also always nice when staff and cooking class participants have come over to say, 'you've done so much so far!' as we get lost in mural brain, staring at painted sections up close for hours. By we, by the way, I mean me and the marvelous Sammy Kovnat, whom I’m lucky to have assisting me on this project. Her technical expertise and conversations have made the tricky parts of mural making so much more enjoyable. I'm excited to show you the final art when it's done! The concept will be very veggie-forward and incorporate my love for comic panels in large scale. 

Sammy and I working away on the first of three walls we’re painting for Vetri Community Partnership this month

Speaking of comics…

I started a comic series over the summer with the Los Angeles Times called Si Dios Quiere (God Willing) about Puerto Ricans' relationship to faith and spirituality. The idea for this project arose when I realized that most of the Puerto Ricans I knew didn’t grow up Catholic the way I assumed most of us did. I no longer practice religion, but I am deeply curious about other people who do. I wanted to extend this project beyond my network and was delightfully surprised when many Puerto Ricans across the world answered my Instagram story asking for folks to participate. Via Google Meet, I listened with awe and admiration as strangers opened up about their spiritual encounters and religious traumas. I now have so many interviews recorded and sketches to comb through for more editions of this series, but as any cartoonist will tell you, comic work is not well-paid. It's been tough to dedicate time toward this while juggling other projects to pay my bills. I'd love to recommit to working on this series again throughout the winter and find more avenues for funding the project, so if you know of some grants or other ideas for funding, let me know.

Nagging brain bits

I'm still adjusting to the full-time freelance life and strategizing on how I want to piece together a livable income long-term. I love being in the middle of a project, but it’s hard not to spiral when I don’t immediately know what’s coming next. I know a lot of freelancers grapple with this reality constantly. I may not feel "stable" for a while; spinning up a sustainable business takes time and perseverance, I know this. But acknowledging it doesn't make it feel any less scary.

This the question I've posed to my IRL freelance friends lately: how do you mentally deal with the times when you’re not working on a project? 

These have been some responses:

• Running middle of the day errands and relishing in an empty Trader Joe's

• Acknowledging that not every single moment will be productive. As in, sometimes you'll set a goal to do something but anxiously scroll on your phone instead. The hours, how they fly!

• Releasing from the 9-5 mentality, which frankly is mythological for some industries anyway (I know many 9-5 friends who say they are *hardly* working 8 hours everyday but just sort of pretend to keep up appearances. I won't give you up, but you know who you are, readers)

If you also work in project chunks, I’d love to hear how you handle between-project anxiety.

Some books for your reading list

I’ll be honest — it’s been very challenging to sit down and allow myself the leisure of reading for chunks at a time. My mind does a lot of racing, and I get easily distracted. These were a few books that successfully quieted the brain chatter this year:

Alison by Lizzy Stewart: I love how Stewart seamlessly incorporates hand-drawn, watercolor, and collaged spreads in this gorgeous graphic novel - so inspirational, so transportive. Highly recommend! 

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado: I've been reaiding more YA and children's books lately as I consider gearing some of my illustration work toward publishing. I loved this recommendation from my friend Meghan McCullough; the author perfectly captures the uncomfortable flip side of close female friendships, and Charlie's relationship with her mom ached my heart throughout the book.

Y/N by Esther Yi: Surreal and richly written, this book was an interesting step outside of my reading comfort zone this season. If you're intrigued by parasocial relationships, enjoy KPop, and have a tolerance for some mild horror, this is for you.

If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading and supporting. I am boundlessly grateful. I hope you have a beautiful wrap to your year.

Til next we meet,
Cindy

P.S.: If you liked reading this, you wouldn’t believe how helpful it would be if you shared it with a friend or left a comment. Every little bit means a lot!