Center for Cultural Power- Rooted In Joy
I am one of several artists who got to create a new piece for this “Rooted in Joy” campaign for the Center for Cultural Power formerly CultureStrike. The name of the campaign was Rooted in Joy, a 2025 climate justice campaign focused on uplifting BIPOC-led narratives around climate displacement, community resilience, and collective care. And I totally forgot to share it.
Some of the artists who did work around this campaign are Orion Camero, Ashluka Lukashevsky, Coz Con, Mayanthi Jayawardena, Loisse Ledres, Kah Yangi, Gabriela Aleman, Jazz Diaz, and many more AND we were partnered with a community based organization who does work around the issues in bold above. Mine was Movement Generations and there were others Like Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Food Access los Angeles, Push Buffalo, California Environmental Justice Alliance, and more.
Here’s a big about Movement Generation:
Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture.
So as happens many times when working on artwork for a campaign, goal, movement, or strategy ; the work develops and shifts. Not for the hell of it, but to communicate the message clearly. Often we only have a few seconds to communicate something to people and then they’re off to the next thing. Some may get a poster, song, film, oetc and llive with it for awhile. But usually its quick! This sketch process started with a bunch of ideas that turned into a sketch about the credo of Movement Generation which is a “just transition” or a transition from extraction, capitalism, destruction, gree, etc to a plan where the planet, people, and justice are considered.
So I depicted moving between something with manufacturing, solitary, less light to something more collective, outdoors, and nourishment. One favors the community, one favors the pockets of multi millionaires and billionaires. But, it changed to feature just the different types of folks sharing with each other.
So this is the final sketch and color treatment!
Heres a bit of process while painting this that was featured on Instagram. Here’s the link to the original post.
This is the final painting rendered with ink and watercolor, with a bit of digital collaging.
Dig this? Check out some artwork for other campaigns such as
- Visions from the Inside 2 -Imprisonment, Abuse in immigration
- ACLU/ Central Valley Report-Police collusion w/ ICE
- People’s Kitchen Collective– Food Justice, Science Fiction
- Rethinking Schools- Suspensions, targeting Black children
- The Public Eye Magazine-Surveillance, Immigration, White Nationalism
