The Garden

Artist Delia King worked with Guild participants to create The Garden, a mural that celebrates the role that the 12th and Cambria Recreation Center plays in helping community members realize and achieve their dreams. This project helped Guild participants to develop skills in wall preparation and repair and mural painting.

The community was very involved in the creation of this mural. A number of residents mentor students in the sport of basketball as a way of bettering their chances of going to college. However, residents did not want a basketball-themed mural. The resulting design is based on equilateral triangles with a limited color palate which represent: strength, trinity, religion. The triangles are arranged to be abstract flowers.

The mural also incorporates inspirational messages from a poem entitled “My Rock” by Lady K Smith that inspired the mural. These include:

Side one: “Some people think of a rock as stationary.”

Side two: “There is a rock in me that makes me go. I was bewildered by the mystery of my ambition. That’s when I found the rock.”

Side three: “This rock won’t break up and does not respond to my questions. This rock just says ‘I am a rock’. And it makes me go.”

The mural was restored in 2022.