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Color Squad

Color Squad is a collective of teen artists that design and implement public art that addresses a need in the community. The collective was voted Best Muralist in Austin in 2019 in the Austin Chronicle’s Best Of poll.

Past projects have included a prominent community mural in East Austin in partnership with Six Square and Cap Metro, a large-scale mural at the Central Texas Food Bank, a community mural in Lott Pocket Park in partnership with GirlForward Austin, a multi-wall mural on Lamar and Barton Springs, and our newest murals at four Cap Metro bus stops around Austin focusing on sustainability.

For more information contact Color Squad Directors Vero Mognato (vero@creativeaction.org) and Anabel Gomez (anabel@creativeaction.org).

Completed Projects:

Peace Be Upon You

Austin Peace Academy, 5110 Manor Rd, Austin, TX 78723 (mural is on 51st street’s wall)

This mural is a representation of community. Created for Austin Peace Academy, each separate shape, while simple itself, creates the beauty and intricacies of the whole project. This is symbolic of the beauty of community as it is made up of many different people. The hands and petals on either side symbolize both Austin Peace Academy’s  student tradition of handing out roses and an embracing of the larger Austin community.

We Will Sustain

Bus stop 1308 at 1115 East St. Johns

This mural is a visual depiction of the incredible feats that can be accomplished through community organizing and a passion for the health and wellbeing of your city. Environmental sustainability is an important aspect of this work, but it goes hand-in-hand with addressing the immense environmental inequality that prevails in Austin, especially in historically disenfranchised communities.

Depicted in this mural are local activists and environmentalists who have been leading this effort:

  • Peter Rivera, Chair of the Springdale-Airport Neighborhood Association and Board of Director for PODER (People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources), was critical in gaining protection for the Redbluff area of East Austin for generations to come.
  • Susana Almanza, Director of PODER, formed the organization to “increase East Austin residents’ participation  in corporate and government decisions related to economic development, environmental hazards and the impact on our East Austin”. She is depicted protesting against the Holly Power Plant, a source of incredible pollution and potential health problems in the community.
  • Raymond Rivera, acts as chair of the Rosewood Neighborhood Association and a Board of Director for PODER, and alongside his brother Pete Rivera worked to preserve Redbluff and its incredible history.



La Colectividad

Made in collaboration with: Mylo Mendez, Lead Artist, and Color Squad Alumni Elle Hebert, Quinn Erickson, Aye Aye, Louisa Najar, and Maxwell Wood

Native Hostel and Bar & Cafe, 807 E. 4th St.

This public art project is presented by Creative Action, an Austin-based arts education non-profit organization, in partnership with Facebook Open Arts. The mural was created by lead artist Mylo Mendez in conversation with members of Color Squad, a collective of teenage artists who design and implement public art around issues of sustainability, community, and equity.

Mylo Mendez makes illustrations influenced by Mexican folk art, Mayan and Aztec design, and the color palettes of the Southwestern United States as a means of exploring their identity. By connecting to the past through artmaking and design, Mendez investigates the contemporary Mexican American experience and its relationship to heritage, family, and politics.

Growing, Growing, Gone

Bus stop 3017, 4001 Braker Ln.
This mural was inspired by the idea of Mother Earth and human connection to nature. It depicts a woman with flowing green hair full of flowers, vines, and leaves. As one looks closer, the beautiful greenery is subtly contrasted with the pounds of trash polluting Mother Earth’s locks. The Earth is portrayed as a living, breathing human being in order to show how, by harming the Earth, we are harming every living thing on the planet… including ourselves.

Groundwork

Cap Metro Headquarters, 2910 E. 5th St.
This mural is meant to remind us that public transportation plays a critical role not only in equity for our community to move about the city, but in the sustainability of our planet as well. Native Austin plants flourish in the windows of the city bus as a symbol of the way that sustainable transportation is a crucial part of our healthy ecosystem.

Seeds of Community

1203 Barton Springs Rd.
This mural, or rather series of murals, was created in recognition and acknowledgment of the LGBTQIA+ community both in Austin, and beyond. Throughout the year, the Color Squad teens were in communication with a number of local organizations that focus on the complexities of the LGBTQIA+ experience. This included workshops with the Gender and Sexuality Center at Ut Austin, Qwell, a halloween bash with OutYouth, and visits from Kind Clinic, among other groups. The mural itself was created in collaboration with local LGBTQIA+ Austinites, Color Squad youth among them. The portraits depict our community’s stories of resilience, self-discovery, growth, and love.

Juntos Somos Austin/Together We are Austin

Lott Pocket Park, 1174 Curve St.
For this mural, we partnered with GirlForward, a community of support dedicated to creating and enhancing opportunities for girls who have been displaced globally by conflict and persecution. We wanted to visually display that Austin is a welcoming and inclusive city, and to have this mural represent the strong diversity we want to see in our community. The feet represent the journey of movement, both within a bustling city as well as migration around the world. The flora evokes growth and the diversity of an alive and thriving ecosystem. The images of people and cityscapes round out our vision of a strong community.

Let's Feed Our Neighbors

Central Texas Food Bank

This mural was created as a commission for the Central Texas Food Bank. Before creating this piece, the teens studied food access and inequality in the greater Austin area through service learning projects and volunteering, as well as workshops from the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, and Food for Black Thought.

More about the inspiration for this piece by Color Squad member Louisa “The biggest themes I wanted people to take away from this piece was solidarity, accessibility, and outreach. I created the sun rays in the background to represent expanding food security throughout Texas. I wanted the fresh produce to make up the Texas outline to highlight and support the idea of ‘Feed our Neighbors.’ I wanted to highlight the hopeful end goal of the food bank which is to make sure everyone has access to a healthy food source.”

Map Your Roots

2921 E. 17th St., Building B

Our strategy of designing and installing a large-scale, community-inspired mural engaged residents in helping create a visual identity for their neighborhood, allowed our teen artists to interact with elders in our community, and cultivated neighborhood pride. Through a year-long research and design process, teen artists from our Color Squad program created a mural on the back of the Center for Creative Action celebrating the history of Chestnut. Their project included historical research and tours, design workshops with neighborhood residents and artists, interviews with neighborhood elders, and a rigorous design and installation process. The mural illustrates how local activists fought to remove a factory that was polluting the area, and Chestnut’s future as a hub for artists, families, businesses, public transportation, sustainable foods, and educational resources. The project culminated in an unveiling ceremony at our Community Art Sunday for 250+ community members. Partners and contributors: Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, African American Cultural Heritage District, UT School of Architecture.

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