|  Photo courtesy of Kyle Bosch |
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| Contents: FOUNDER’S NOTES BY JOHN DE GRAAF
REFLECTIONS: BEAUTIFYING CITIES BY VICKI GRAHAM
SPOTLIGHTS ON MURAL-MAKING ORGANIZATIONS
KARA’S CORNER : "THE NATURE FIX" BOOK REVIEW ON THE BLOG
BEAUTY NEWS
 Photo courtesy of David de Graaf
FOUNDER'S NOTES
by John de Graaf
Friends: Well, spring is finally coming to Seattle after 40 days of below-normal weather. It’s supposed to hit the 70s early next week and that should mean a big and beautiful bloom for our many trees. It’s beautiful here in the winter too, especially on sunny days when the snows of the Olympic and Cascade Mountains brighten our horizons. Slowly, but surely, And Beauty for All is growing. I’m very excited by the great new boost we’ve gotten from our new editor, Vicki Graham. You’ve probably noticed more content in our newsletters—thank Vicki for that! But I have a request—we need new bloggers to write for our website! Our goal is two per month and we are not there yet. Surely you have something to say about beauty in your life, your work, your leisure activities. Surely nature has made a difference in your life. Surely you have opinions about how to make our country more beautiful, less polarized, happier and healthier! We want to hear these from you. Five hundred to a thousand words is perfect, but you can go longer or shorter if you wish. Check out our existing blogs. Show us your writing skills and your love for beauty. This newsletter is not only for you…we want it to be by and about you! I am continuing to promote both the idea of beauty, and the recently-released concept of the Green New Deal. I am pleased that while the GND has its critics, it has also received praise from across our polarized political divide. In fact, the Front Porch Republic recently published an article I wrote that breaks down the GND. Still, a conservative friend of mine finds it both too ambitious and not ambitious enough. He worries that it might be too much Federal over-reach but hopes that local communities can be very much included in the shaping of actual GND policy (the resolution in the House and Senate is affirmational but not specific as to policy). “The devil, of course, is the details,” he wrote to me. But he also feels the concept may not be ambitious enough because it fails to address the lifestyle changes we will need to truly become sustainable, saying nothing about consumerism while studies show that as much as 60 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the raw-material-gathering, production and transport of consumer products, whether produced at home or off-shored. I think that many conservatives and liberals both understand limits and know we can’t continue to consume more and more and be sustainable. But won’t cutting back make us miserable? Not if we bring more beauty into our lives and communities, more nature, more awe and wonder. It’s these things, and social relationships that make us happiest and healthiest according to many studies. Most of us don’t need more stuff but we do need more time, more connection and more beauty in our lives. And we need more art like the urban arts created by the groups Vicki is profiling in this issue. Last month, I started working on a new film about Vallejo, California, called Green New City. This community, now dedicated to at least a measure of its development from nature and the arts, might end up being an urban model for the Green New Deal. It was a great pleasure to interview Vallejo’s mayor at length last month, and also to meet a new Vallejo resident, Rue Mapp, the founder of the great organization, Outdoor Afro, which is about getting more African-Americans to appreciate and enjoy the natural world, as we all should. After my trip to Vallejo, I went to South Carolina to join Appalachian State University professor Iryna Sharaievska in promoting And Beauty for All at the The Academy of Leisure Sciences’ annual meeting. Greenville, where the conference was held, is a lovely city, which has taken great pains to beautify its downtown, re-opening its river, re-purposing its old textile mills while preserving their beauty, and creating great places for pedestrians, thus attracting new businesses and cafes. I think there are many Greenvilles out there in our country. If you live in one, tell us about it! Send photos too! Next month I’ll be taking the message of And Beauty for All to libraries in Wenatchee and Twisp, Washington (April 16 and 18) and to the Moscow, Idaho Co-Op (April 17). May brings another trip to Vallejo for more filming, and then a May 16 keynote address to a large watershed conference in Napa, California. I’m excited about all of this. So that’s the news from here. But your news is more important to us. Write a letter to our editor, Vicki Graham, write a blog. Get involved. Spread the word! May you walk in beauty! John
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| REFLECTIONS: BEAUTIFYING CITIES by Vicki Graham “Most people most of the time have strong feelings about beauty, order, and harmony, and at some level are wounded by its absence,” claims David W. Orr, author of Design on the Edge: The Making of a High-Performance Building. He believes, along with biologist E. O, Wilson, that we have an “innate affinity for life…for trees, water, animals, broad vistas, sky, and mountains…an inborn sense of harmony that is part of our evolutionary equipment.” Yes, “biophilia” does seem to be an essential element of being human. But what about people who live in cities, either by choice or circumstance, people who do not have access to natural places, or even parks or gardens? What about people who love the energy and the diversity of a large metropolitan area and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else? Where, on a busy city street, might city dwellers find a sense of well-being and refuge? One place they might find it is in a different kind of beauty. Not the beauty of nature, but human-created beauty: a work of art, a mural. A place for the eye to rest, a respite from the noise and chaos of a beloved city. All across the country, public art organizations have been working with communities to beautify even the most run-down, neglected areas of cities. The murals are designed and painted in collaboration with the community to fit the spaces they occupy, celebrating, through color, design, and image, the place and the lives of the people who live there. These murals have become an essential part of city life. And so, this month, we are spotlighting five public art organizations working to beautify communities through the painting of murals. |
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Beautify Earth
Intentional, colorful environments are where creativity and inspiration are born.
 Photo courtesy of Beautify Earth Beautify Earth is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to making the world a brighter, more inspiring place. By empowering our world’s artists, and making our bland/blighted walls/fixtures their canvases, every street can create a joyful experience instead of a sad or fearful one. Art creates change, turns a neighborhood into a community, instills pride, and has the capacity to inspire; converting frowns and apathy into smiles and inspiration. Conceived and originally funded by Executive Director Evan Meyer, this initiative started on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica (dubbed “Stinkin’ Lincoln”). Evan set out to prove that anyone is capable of making change and that the reward of giving back is inherently the highest form of compensation. Beautify Earth is now an international movement, using proven strategies and value sets to bring care, art, color and love everywhere. For more information on Beautify Earth, please visit their website.  Photo courtesy of Beautify Earth |
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GoodSpace Murals
 Photo courtesy of GoodSpace Murals
 Photo courtesy of GoodSpace Murals GoodSpace Murals, a Minnesota based organization, was founded by Greta McLain and Candida Gonzales in 2016. Our vision is to promote community development through the creation of public works of art. We involve the community in every part of the process of creating a mural, from design to participation in family-friendly painting events. Our goal is to give everyone a chance to be a part of the creation of the mural, promoting a common sense of ownership of the artwork and fostering a shared pride in the artwork and in oneself, which transforms more generally into pride in place. The mural making process creates an educational opportunity for the public to engage in fine art, provides a space to sow friendship and relationship between neighbors, and offers opportunities for youth to teach within their community. For more information on GoodSpace Murals, please visit our website. |
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Groundswell
 Photo courtesy of Groundswell
 Photo courtesy of Groundswell Founded in 1996, Groundswell is a NYC-based organization that brings together youth, artists, and community organizations to use art as a tool for social change and create a more just and equitable world. Thus far, five hundred murals have been completed by Groundswell, in collaboration with hundreds of community-based organizations, neighborhood groups, and government agencies throughout New York City. The collaborative process behind these compelling artworks demonstrates our enduring belief that art creates community and community creates change. We believe the unique creative process of making socially-engaged visual art--research, design, and fabrication--mirrors the visioning, creating, and collaboration necessary for social change. We create exciting, nurturing learning environments for young people that spark curiosity, political awakenings, and collective solution-building. We build youth confidence, work in service of youth ideas, and foster critical thinking and communication skills to explore their agency outside of Groundswell and get involved in community action to realize their vision for a more just and equitable world. For more information on Groundswell, please visit our website. |
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Precita Eyes
Help us gather the hands that paint the walls that speak so boldly.
 Photo courtesy of Precita Eyes, Wings of Change Mural, 2017
Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Inc. was established in 1977, founded by Susan Cervantes and Luis Cervantes with other artists in San Francisco's Mission District. As an inner city non-profit community-based organization, our muralists work to enrich and beautify urban environments and educate the public about the process and history of community mural art. One of only a handful of community mural arts centers in the United States, Precita Eyes has a direct effect on arts education, tourism and economic development in San Francisco's Mission District. Working with a wide variety of neighborhoods and communities, we bring art into the daily lives of people, nourishing their inherent creativity and celebrating the beauty of their community. We maintain a deep commitment to collaboration, ensuring that the creative work produced is accessible, both physically and conceptually, to the people whose lives it impacts, reflecting their concerns, joys and triumphs. For more information on Precita Eyes, please visit our website.
 Photo courtesy of Precita Eyes, The Bean Soup Literary Mural, 2013 |
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Urban Artworks
 Photo courtesy of Urban Artworks
 Photo courtesy of Urban Artworks Urban ArtWorks is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides opportunities for contemporary artists and local youth to work together to create public works of art. Our goal is to empower young people through professional opportunities in the arts. Urban ArtWorks was developed in 1995 as a result of a plan to clean up trash and graffiti along the busway in Seattle’s industrial zone and enrich the surroundings through the painting of murals. Private and public partners collaborated to establish an arts program for at-risk youth centered on the development of these murals. In 1998, Urban ArtWorks incorporated as a non-profit organization, and the scope of our work has expanded far beyond the area now known as the SODO Urban Art Corridor. Since 1995, we’ve collaborated with more than 2,000 youth to bring art to public and private spaces throughout Seattle neighborhoods. Today, our organization works full time to promote the arts, and produce new public artworks. Our youth programming continues to empower young people through professional opportunities in the arts. For more information on Urban ArtWorks, please visit our website. |
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KARA'S CORNER: A Message from the Social Media Director
Hi fellow beauty lovers!
Spring surprised us in Western Washington with high temperatures nearing the 70s in the Seattle area and even the coast. Last week I was fortunate enough to be on spring break from classes and took a day trip to the ocean beaches to enjoy this rare warm weather in March.
 In many ways, spring break to me is a great opportunity to get my fix of nature that I cannot always get during the hustle and bustle of the quarter system. It is a chance to reconnect with the environment in which I feel most alive, to admire the ongoing symphony of the natural world and to chime in with a note or two of my own.
It is appropriate, then, that I just finished reading Florence William’s book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. I read it upon John’s recommendation and found it to be a worthwhile, insightful read that combined globally-garnered scientific data and anecdotes of quality time spent in nature. To read my full review of the book, see my blog post on the And Beauty for All website. |
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