Research Post 14 — When the Mural Began Calling 🎨🌎✨

 Research Post 14 — When the Mural Began Calling 🎨🌎✨

Lately, I’ve been seeing so many art calls.

Murals. Community walls. Public art projects. Invitations for artists to bring stories into shared spaces.

And something in me keeps saying: this is part of the journey.

As I continue building the research series for the Great BIG Book, I keep seeing a mural forming in my mind — not just one scene, but a scene of scenes.

At the center is the Earth itself. Alive. Breathing. Holding all of us.

From that center, a newborn enters the world, surrounded by gentle hands, skin-to-skin with the mother, held in warmth and trust.

Around this central image, circles of time begin to unfold.

One circle carries the earliest peoples, fire, herbs, and healing plants. Another shows movement across lands and waters, the migrations of families and cultures. Another honors women, midwives, and the sacred knowledge of birth passed from one generation to the next. There is also a harder circle — the disruption of colonization, systems that separated people from their bodies, land, and traditions. And finally, a circle of healing and reclamation, where wisdom returns through community, memory, and care.

I keep thinking this mural is not only art.

It is research.

It is history made visible.

It is a way of bringing the themes of the book into public space so people can pause, reflect, and feel something.

Seeing all these art calls lately feels like a sign.

Maybe the wall is calling.

Maybe this project is meant to live not only in pages, but in color, movement, and community.

This is Research Post 14 in the journey toward the Great BIG Book: the mural begins to take shape.