Currently, Byada’s mural focuses on women moving together and “trying to tune into the moment,” she said. “The moment contains music and life and love if you can blast your filters out from the inside and clean them up to let more things in.” By letting more things in, you can become closer to yourself and repel fear, pressure, and negativity.
Above: With the base colors done, Byada is beginning to add details to the Near West Side’s mural.
Art can also be used to preserve things. As communities become more divided, they lose their appreciation for the treasured and respected elements that built the foundation for residents and businesses.
“This world has a lot of really beautiful things, but it is also pretty clear that for reasons none of us seem to understand, we are all kind of slowly taking apart these beautiful things. So, we should all try to keep adding to the beauty personally whenever possible,” Byada said. “It seems the only thing we personally have the power to do is create beauty, whereas stopping the destruction of it always seems beyond the reach of just one of us.”
“I can only hope that people will take a moment from their phones and look up and feel a little tighter about their neighborhood because, despite all the agendas pulling us apart, we are all in this together,” she said. Byada’s work builds off of goals set by NWSP and cultivates an environment where art can communicate, empower, and enliven every member of the community.
“They just seemed to hold [everything together],” she added. “Our childhoods, our confusion during adolescence, our families and communities, our anything and everything.”
Above: Byada converted her living room into an art studio to put the mural’s panels together.
Byada’s interest in working in the Near West Side is simple: “Most importantly, because it needs more art!” By integrating the work done by NWSP and local organizations into her art, she can create a renewed value for it.
“The world is too small for us to do anything but work together,” she added.
