On Monday and Tuesday night, local painter Ta-coumba Aiken worked with Cedarview Commons residents to begin creating a mural for the community to express their present joys and future hopes. The painting process began with what Aiken called a “lifeline” wherein each person chose their own color of pastel to extend one community line reaching around and across the 6 foot by 4 foot canvas.

One at a time, adults walked meditatively around the canvas creating their unique segment of the line, and children climbed up onto the tables where the canvas lay to play their part. After this first lifeline was complete, connecting each artist to one another, every person sketched out his or her own ideas for the mural on separate smaller canvases before adding more color and ornamentation to the larger communal canvas. Artists as young as two-years-old joined the fray. Aiken will gather all of these ideas and energy to create the final mural that will be presented to the community on June 18 at the conclusion of the Cedarview UnCommons Arts Festival.