The Bloom mural, is a project by The Hub of Bakersfield. This large-scale community-focused mural project took place over several months in 2020 and 2021. It is a collaborative project between two lead artists and large support base of community volunteers. Brandon Thompson applied the base coats of the sky and painted the portraits of each girl. Jennifer Williams-Cordova brought her design expertise to the project, and also executed the flowers and greenery that surround the figures.
“Bloom” is a message of empowerment and inspiration to the girls and young women of East Bakersfield. The creators believe that this mural is necessary at this moment to deliver a message to girls and young women that they matter. Depicting actual girls who live in East Bakersfield, the mural aims to communicate that all girls- no matter who they are or where they are from- have the potential to be whatever they want to be in life, and like flowers in spring, they can “bloom.” While honoring East Bakersfield’s diversity, complexity, cultural identity, aesthetic, accomplishments and legacy, Bloom aims to affirm all girls’ self worth, that they can grow up to become as smart, valuable, successful, powerful, beautiful and important as anyone else in the world.
Community Wall:
Details:
Community Paint Day:
Design process:
Jen was approached to join the project with a very loose concept and a few references of other artists’ work as inspiration.
This is the initial concept and plan created from what was provided.
A mock-up was initially submitted with stock photos, then replaced with real girls who live in the neighborhood.
Column colors were refined to mimic the sky at different times of day:
As a professional photographer, Jen also photographed reference photos used for the design:
With the concept complete, a doodle-grid was created in order to transfer the design onto such a large wall.
The wall was photographed with a series of random doodles, seen below. Then, this was layered over the design mock-up and provided each artist involved with a reference for scale.
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