LA Commons, an arts organization based in south Los Angeles managed the installation of a new mural at the Exodus Recovery Mental Health Urgent Care Center on the Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Campus. LA Commons creates collaborative public artworks in which youth are deeply involved. Artist Wenceslao Quiroz led a team of 16 artists from high schools around the area. The team held two story-gathering events with local residents during which the participants discussed the connection between community and mental health. During a series of after school workshops, the stories that they gathered became the inspiration for the mural’s design. Quiroz then arranged the concepts to create a cohesive artwork. The design features a structure meant to reference the Watts Towers that morphs into an embracing couple and a tree. Embedded in the tree’s foliage are scenes of a caregiver helping a patient, an image of a child playing with building blocks and an image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taken during the March on Selma. The mural was painted in a vacant space on the campus over the course of several months. The painting process gave the students an opportunity to work directly with a professional artist and develop their technical skills. The mural that they created acknowledges the important role that providers play in the healing process, the necessity of early detection and treatment and the importance of a community’s access to health care. The mural was made possible by the Office of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas with support from the staff at Exodus Recovery Inc.

Wenceslao Quiroz was born in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico in 1982. When he was four years old, his family immigrated to East Los Angeles where his passion for art flourished. Quiroz initially expressed his creativity through graffiti, painting the streets of Los Angeles, acts of vandalism that marked the beginning of his career as a prolific public artist and muralist. Youth artists who worked on this project: Angelica Astorga, Jocelyn Baez, Jasmine Garcia, Cinthia Hernandez, Emily Lares, Anita Lopez, Brian Lopez, Maria Madera, Roxana Ramos, Brenda Robollar, Ahmirah Roberson, Shalonda Ward, Marcus Champion, Armando Ruiz, and Astrid Villagran.