[Reinaldo] So, it was around, like, four or five years ago.

That I got approached by Ginger Ewing from Terrain.

Um, she was asking me if I wanted to participate in this community project.

And then I saw in the pamphlets of the advertisement uh, a picture of a guy with dreadlocks.

And that happened to be Carl.

[Carl laughing] Thats funny.

My name is Ginger Ewing, and I am the co-founder and executive director of Terrain.

[Music] So we originally conceived of the idea about four years ago.

We were really inspired by J.R., who is a French artist who's really known worldwide for going into neighborhoods and communities and doing kind of large scale photographs and in celebration of those communities.

And my father grew up in East Central.

It is a special place for him and his story.

And so when we conceived of the idea, I thought about kind of a storytelling project in the neighborhood East Central was kind of a no brainer for us.

[Reinaldo] I love when Ginger comes with challenges, like, I love that I get really excited every time that she reachs out to me because I know that she trust that we can make it happen.

And there is always something that we need to figure it out and it's going to make us better.

[Ginger] I didn't grow up in the neighborhood.

So a big part of this is relationship building.

We didn't want the neighborhood to feel like we were coming in and trying to do something to the neighborhood No, we wanted this to be a reciprocal, meaningful thing that was happening to the neighborhood.

And so a lot of it was just trust building and that takes time.

[Ginger] ...your time.

Really we want this to be an opportunity for people to come together, to gather, to celebrate each other.

[Reinaldo] So, one thing of like the mastermind of Ginger Ewing and Terrain, is like she is always thinking about like how to engage the community even more.

There is definitely plenty of murals.

Right?

Like something that beautifies a wall, and that's the experience that you have to just looking at something.

But you wanted to go a little bit beyond that.

[Ginger] One of the things that was really important for us was to not only celebrate the people of the neighborhood by, you know, having something that's gorgeous and that they can see themselves reflected in, but also the collection of the neighborhood stories.

And so the idea is, is we're going to launch a website.

It's going to start with 20 people's stories, but we are building the wireframe of the website in a way where we can add hundreds of stories if we want to.

So not only is there a digital website, not only is there a physical mural, but you can raise your phone up to the people who stories that we have on the website, you can raise your phone up to their their photo and it will take you directly to their landing page on the website so you can hear their story.

[Carl] Doing the photographs with the community was fun because you're in the space, you're taking photos of people you're clowning around, you're getting to know people.

And we just started talking while they were in front of the camera.

And I was trying to capture them as they were.

I wasn't trying to pose them.

Some people felt more comfortable than others, and so I just captured them as they were.

Like, some people wanted to smile.

Some people throw their hands up, like, do what you do.

I want you on the wall.

I don't want some type of pose picture.

And so I was able to, I think, capture people as they were.

[Ginger] So, Carl, Reinaldo and I spent hours and hours and hours printing out those large scale photographs, then cutting them out and then putting together the composition of the piece.

[Carl] So we laid them all out on the Terrain gallery floor and trying to figure out our composition, [Ginger] It was just trial and error.

Who looks good here?

Let's do this.

It was mostly kind of just playing around with the composition of the piece.

[Reinaldo] It was kind of like trying maybe to find sizes that can fit in the space that we have available.

Uh, we have a wall right here that has a lot of like holes and also windows that we need to work around.

So it's not really like to created a hierarchy.

It was just to also like develop a sense of movement in the piece.

Like if we put everything the same size, it just looks kind of like monotonous.

[Carl] Like Reinaldo was saying, We were thinking about composition, like, how is this going to look from a distance?

Like creating some type of dynamic in the composition.

As you're looking at the piece.

[Reinaldo] There is plenty of people living in this community, right?

And it's really hard to like, reach out to everybody.

I want people to understand that, even when they are not in the, in this wall.

This is a sample and a tribute to everybody who has been living here.

[Ginger] This is really like a show, not tell a project.

And we anticipated that once the mural would go up, there would be this excitement and people wanting to participate.

And that's what is happening is people are excited, but they're also maybe disappointed that their loved one or they didn't get to participate.

[Carl] It's a pretty diverse group of people that are on the wall right.

And like you say, we can't fit everybody on the wall.

We got as many as we could in the amount of time that we were given to represent the community.

[Ginger] So, longer term goal is that this is just a start.

And if we have the funding and we have the spaces and the places to continue this mural, we absolutely will do that.

[Music] [Reinaldo] I mean, it's an honor, though.

Like, I feel that's great that we can use our skills to somehow highlight people, make them feel visible.

They feel that this is kind of like a small tribute to what they have been doing.

When people pass by and they are excited about had they come and tried to like, see themselves reflected on the wall, um, its just great.

[Carl] Yeah, I was - when we started putting the people up, I was putting Larry up and a lady walked by and she was like, That's Larry.

I was like, Yeah.

She's like, I love Larry.

And then she just kept walking and so, to me, that's what it's about.

Like just bringing a little bit of joy.

I mean, I'm sure people already have a lot of joy in their life.

But just to add to it, um, and like Reinaldo is saying, its an honor to to be able to be a part of that.

[Ginger] I think one of the things that was really important in this process is oftentimes east central neighborhood is talked about, about like what isn't present.

And one of the things that we were pretty adamant about is despite all of the challenges that the neighborhood is facing, look at how like beautiful and culturally rich and all of like the love and joy and the good things that are happening to the neighborhood.

[Betsy] Thank you everyone.

Welcome to East Central.

This is what community looks like.

[Ginger] And that was really important for us to capture that energy.

There's so many incredible people doing really incredible work.

I think you're going to see East Central um, change in really incredible ways.

And, um, we are proud to just be kind of a small part of being able to reflect their own brilliance.