When a Pico Union bakery chose to paint over a mural on the side of their building last year, Serena Au knew the gang graffiti scrawled over its wall would only worsen.
Au, an occupational therapist at Sophia T. Salvin Special Education Center across the street, immediately recognized the negative impact it would have on her students. Au turned to the community for a new mural, one that would include their favorite Dodgers.
“I marched over to talk to the bakery owner to buff out the tags because my students see it every day. It was the one mural the community wanted back,” Au said, adding that the mural before depicted Salvin students, some in mobility walkers, in moments of achievement. Bilingual messages of inspiration were inscribed on the wall to uplift the students with cognitive and mobility disabilities at the school across the street.
The bakery owners agreed to contract a muralist, Au said, and paint a Dodgers mural on the side of the building on one condition: if the team won the World Series.
When the Dodgers overcame the Toronto Blue Jays last November, Au knew there was an opportunity to get students and the surrounding school community involved through her mural therapy program at the school.
Enter Mister Alek, a Watts-based muralist whose art spans LA and boldly depicts the faces of indigenous peoples, artists, and athletes that represent LA culture.
Au asked the artist to paint a Dodgers mural on the wall facing Salvin based on input from neighbors and school families. Soon, the pair arranged for groups of students with disabilities to help buff over graffiti on the wall before the mural took shape.
Xavier Rivas, a tenth grader at Salvin, was ecstatic to hear players from his favorite team would be represented on a wall he sees every day.
Rivas, who goes to Dodgers games so often that the stadium staff recognizes him, said it was a dream come true to contribute to the piece.
“I felt proud because it’s going to be there for a long time and a lot of people are going to see it,” Rivas said. “[The Dodgers] represent LA.”
Au saw the Dodgers superfan stretching high from his walker and harness to paint around the hard-to-reach sections of the wall. She said she hadn’t seen him motivated to move so much in months. “Sports inspires curiosity, and curiosity inspires mobility,” she said.
As the mural process went on, students with speech disorders at Salvin practiced names like Yamamoto or Ohtani more regularly to improve their intonation, Au said.
Alek had no problem with passing students paintbrushes and rollers to make their mark and add a splash of blue to the uniforms of their favorite players.
Nearly a month and 400 cans of spray paint later, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Fernando Valenzuela materialized along the 100-foot-long wall.
As Alek put some finishing touches on the piece on Tuesday, a woman in a white sedan slowly rolled by to offer a thumbs-up from inside her car and shouted, “Go Dodgers!”
“Every other car is honking or showing support. It’s something that resonates with them. Besides being beautiful, it’s something they relate to and something they like…” Alek said. “The kids across the street really seem to connect with the Dodgers, and that’s why I put ‘Dedicated to Salvin’ because they’ve been very supportive.”
This week, the artist and Au will travel to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education to present on the impact of the mural and art as therapy during the Alumni of Color Conference. Au said she’s ready to share the community building that the mural allowed during its process.
“The intentionality behind celebrating our block and its people’s cherished memories that they will hopefully get to enjoy daily for years to come has created unity in our neighborhood we have never experienced — everyone can get behind loving the kids and loving our city,” Au said.
The community response Alek has received over the past month spent painting has been a similar one.
“The story I hear a lot is, ‘We needed something like this in our neighborhood. Thank you.’”
