children’s minnesota hired me to do a gay mural!!?!?
pride month is (unfortunately) over for 2025, but that means i have free time now😍 and i can finally get my social media together! here’s a post outlining the process and stuff about this gorgeous mural i was able to design <3
if you prefer short-form / more visual content, there’s gonna be some reels on my instagram (eventually) that you can watch instead!
⭐INTRO⭐
SO earlier this year in like april, i was blessed with the dopest opportunity to design a mural for Children’s minnesota hospital in minneapolis. their guy peter pearson had this sick idea to make a mural out of legos and have the community build it together, tiny block by tiny block, at their pride booth this year! and they wanted me to design the mural!! :o
this was by far my most favorite and most meaningful commission i have ever had the chance to do, and i am so so grateful i got to be a part of this project. words cannot describe!! it was beyond lovely to be able to make an impact on my local queer community and be able to provide us with some joy and feelings of togetherness and safety during these fucked up political times!! (this shit is not normallll 🙃) yall this is the main reason i be creating!!! i’m so glad to have this platform and these kinds of opportunities!!
🌈my CREATIVE/design PROCESS explained🌈
children’s goal with the mural was to emulate a “burst of queer joy” (which is like, my whole thing as an artist!!!) and giving a sense of welcome and safety to those who walk in the hospital- letting everyone (but especially the queer community) know that they are loved and valued here.
so i wanted to include the words “you belong” in the piece to make that message very clear!! and with the rest of the design i wanted to make it even more clear who i was talking to, so next up,,, we have the colors and shapes to talk about!!
okay so part of their branding is these cute little stars, and they have this incredible pronoun galaxy that they made last year (2024). So i wanted to keep going with the space theme and decided to make a lil spaceship blasting off! the fumes are THE ORIGINAL RAINBOW OF THE PRIDE FLAG, and the spaceship is the newer colors of the updated pride flag that includes BIPOC AND TRANS REPRESENTATION (BECAUSE BOTH ARE POINTY SHAPES YKNOW??!! IT MADE SENSE IN MY HEAD). AND THEN I WANTED TO HAVE LITTLE STAR CLUSTERS IN THE SKY TO REPRESENT ALL THE PRIDE FLAGS! I COULDN’T GET EVERYTHING IN THERE BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY, BUT I TRIED TO INCLUDE THE biggest ones. I WAS ALSO LIMITED BY THE SPECIFIC LEGO COLORS WE HAD TO CHOOSE FROM, SO IT MAYBE LOOKS A LITTLE OFF BUT THE INTENT WAS THERE!! AND THEN OBVIOUSLY I WANTED IT TO BE COLORFUL af AND GORGEOUS. AND I LOVE ME SOME ROUNDED SHAPES AND FLUID BITS, WHICH WAS A CHALLENGE SINCE IT ALL HAD TO BE PIXELATED AND MADE OUT OF TINY NON-ROUND SQUARES!! BUT I THINK IT TURNED OUT PERFECTLY AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS IN PERSON.
so anyways once i designed the mural and it was approved by the whole team, i made some edits that were requested to make it even better, and then sent the color key and everything off to peter for all the other stuff!! peter and his team did the bulk of the work for sure!! after this point i just had to kick back and wait for pride to come!
see the final design below vvv
pride-flag-inspired spaceship in the sky with rainbow colored fumes coming out of it, and a light blue and yellow goopy looking background, with the words “you belong!’ and several clusters of stars in the colors of different pride flags scattered around
⭐actual building process⭐
THERE WAS SOOOO MUCH WORK PUT INTO THIS ON CHILDREN’S END, INCLUDING PETER WHO SOURCED LOCAL WOOD!?!??!? AND BUILT!!! THE ENTIRE fCKING FRAME BY HIMSELF?!?!? YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT HIS PROCESS AND JOURNEY HERE (CLICK THE WORD HERE TO GO TO THE LINK and if it doesnt work i am so sorry someone please tell me).
peter and his squad set up everything (most of that is described in peter’s post which i just linked up there!)
and then our babes who attended twin cities pride all built the piece together over the weekend!! i wasn’t able to be there for it because i was vending at people’s pride, but it sounded like it was meaningful and healing for a lot of folks :’) so it’s super wild that i got to be a part of that!!
and then peter saved the very last block for me to build and put in :’) which made for a very emotional and cathartic end to pride weekend for me. my incredible partner, jesse, dropped me off there on sunday so i didn’t have to lose my mind over parking <333 and then i also had some of my gorgeous friends, lorin and martin, meet me there at the mural and help me put together that last block (because i am not gonna lie, legos usually stress me out and i avoid them because it’s just too many little pieces to keep track of lmao. but it was actually super easy to put together thanks to the beautiful volunteers that set up the cute little kits!!) yay!! and it’s done!! here are some pics of the stuff i just talked about vvv
🌈outro🌈
the finished piece will be hung up at children’s minnesota hospital in minneapolis soon, where it will live hopefully for a long time!! <3 we are lucky to have been able to choose a high-traffic spot right in one of the entrances to the hospital!!
