‘‘This Local Artist’s Mural Is Turning Heads and Changing Minds”

On the corner of 7th and Main in downtown [City], where graffiti tags and crumbling brick once defined the landscape, something extraordinary has appeared: a mural that doesn’t just brighten a wall, but awakens something inside those who pass by.

It’s called “We Still Bloom,” and it's the work of 28-year-old local artist Marisol Rivera a self-taught muralist with a brush full of stories and a heart full of history. It’s bold, breathtaking, and breathtakingly human. But the mural isn’t just making people stop and stare; it’s making them feel.

And that was always the point.

🌿 From Silence to Color

Marisol grew up just ten blocks from where her mural now lives. Her neighborhood wasn’t the kind that made it into travel blogs or Instagram feeds. It was a place full of hard-working families, cracked sidewalks, and dreams quietly deferred.

She speaks softly, but with conviction. “There were days when the world felt gray, like nothing beautiful would ever grow here,” she says. “But my mother used to say, ‘Even wildflowers find a way.’ That always stayed with me.”

Raised by a single mother after her father left when she was eight, Marisol found refuge in art. She’d draw on the backs of old receipts, paper bags, even cereal boxes. Her mother worked two jobs to keep food on the table, but always made space for Marisol’s creativity . Even if it was just a new box of crayons from the dollar store.

“I think she saw that art was the only place I could breathe,” Marisol says. “It was my escape and my voice.”

After high school, Marisol couldn’t afford art school. Instead, she worked at a local café, painted murals for neighborhood businesses, and took online classes late into the night. Slowly, quietly, she was building something a language of color and emotion she couldn’t yet name.

Then the pandemic came.

💔 The Year Everything Changed

Marisol returned home in 2020 to care for her mother, who contracted COVID-19 while working at a long-term care facility. She died in April, one of the early victims. The grief was seismic.

“I stopped painting. I stopped everything. It felt like the color went out of the world,” she says.

What brought her back wasn’t art it was memory. One day, while sorting through a box of her mother’s belongings, Marisol found an old note her mother had scribbled in Spanish on the back of a grocery list. It read: “Cuando no encuentres luz, sé la luz.” (When you can’t find the light, be the light.)

Marisol says she cried for hours. Then, the next day, she picked up a brush.

🎨 The Birth of “We Still Bloom”

With the help of a local nonprofit and a small arts grant, Marisol began painting. She found a decaying wall on a building near her old bus stop, the very place her mother used to wait with her for school. “It felt right. Like I was bringing life back to something we both walked past for years.”

The mural took nearly two months to complete.

At its center is a girl modeled loosely after Marisol’s younger self holding a shattered mirror. In each piece of broken glass, faces emerge: a nurse, a grandmother, a child, a refugee, a young man holding a protest sign. They are not portraits of celebrities or icons. They’re portraits of the forgotten the backbone of the city.

Above them, flowers bloom wildly from cracks in the concrete, twining around telephone wires and broken street signs. A banner across the top reads, simply: “We Still Bloom.”

“The cracks, the broken mirror, the people who’ve struggled, they’re all part of the story,” Marisol explains. “But the flowers remind us that we can still rise. Even when the world breaks us, we can bloom again.”

💬 A Wall That Speaks

The response has been overwhelming. Neighbors stopped to watch her work, first curiously, then devotedly. Some brought sandwiches and coffee. Others came just to talk.

“I lost my sister last year,” one woman told Marisol quietly, standing beneath the mural with tears in her eyes. “Seeing this makes me feel like she’s still here.”

A group of children painted small flowers along the bottom of the wall, each one bearing the name of a loved one. One 10-year-old, Malik, painted a sunflower and named it Hope. “Because that’s what this is,” he said.

Even city workers paused during their shifts to take pictures. One told Marisol, “This wall... it makes the whole street feel alive again.”

Strangers began leaving notes and letters at the mural’s base little folded prayers, confessions, memories. Some just said, “Thank you.”

🌍 More Than Art

For Marisol, this is only the beginning. She’s now planning a citywide series called “Healing Walls” murals that focus on community grief, joy, and resilience. Each one will be co-designed with local residents and painted in neighborhoods that are often overlooked.

“I want these walls to speak for the people who’ve been silenced the kids growing up in food deserts, the elders who’ve been forgotten, the moms working two jobs and still showing up,” she says. “I want art that holds people. That reminds them they matter.”

🧠 Why It Matters

In a world saturated with division, distraction, and despair, “We Still Bloom” is a reminder of our shared humanity. It’s a sacred pause. A space for reflection. A mirror that doesn’t just show who we are but who we could become.

And sometimes, that’s all it takes to change a neighborhood. Or a life.

Standing in front of the mural one quiet morning, an elderly man touches one of the painted faces a nurse, mid-smile, eyes soft with compassion. “That’s my daughter,” he says, voice cracking. “She worked in the ER for 14 years. She never came home.”

He wipes his eyes. “But now she’s part of something beautiful.”

✨ Come and See

If you’re in [City], take the time to visit “We Still Bloom” on 7th and Main. Don’t just snap a photo. Stand there for a moment. Read the faces. Let yourself feel.

You might just find a part of yourself blooming