MYPros honors three artists’ messages of ‘hope’

Children and teens affected by Super Typhoon Yutu express their feelings through art last Saturday as the Marianas Young Professionals  concluded its Super Typhoon Yutu recovery mission.

The Marianas Young Professionals presented its “Hope is Here to Stay” award and cash prizes to three more artists last Saturday, following the completion of the group’s Super Typhoon Yutu recovery mission.

The organization’s “Hope is Here to Stay” award honors artists whose artwork promotes community hope in the wake of the widespread devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu last October.

The group’s first honoree was Mina Benavente who was presented with her award back in January.

The additional artists are Peter Aldan, Kimberly Mendiola, and Yolani Camacho. All three artists, after completing their murals at the MYPros Disaster Recovery Center, were awarded cash prizes of $1,500 last Saturday.

Aldan, Mendiola, Camacho, and Benavente all painted murals of what they think hope represents.

Mendiola described her mural as a way to portray people who came from trauma. She wanted to create a painting with the children that would deliver the message of the devastation of Yutu and how the community can come out of it with hope.

“From looking at this wall, you’re going to see that there’s a crowd of people in black and transparent silhouettes and they’re all together. These are people who experienced trauma and, as they walk toward the rainbow that’s pictured in the middle, they start to become colorful, they start to inherit colors. That’s the hope that is being instilled in them through community work, through people, through talking,” she said.

Camacho said her piece is about allowing children to express positive thoughts.

“This signifies positivity and letting the kids put in their positive thoughts throughout the whole disaster. Instead of focusing on the negative, we want them to have an outlet for positivity. I painted it white and the idea is to have them come in and fill them in because a lot of them had trouble doing it on their own so I laid the framework and had them fill it in,” she said.

To emphasize its message of hope, MYPros brought in children and teens and gave them the opportunity to work alongside the artists to complete the murals to give them a means to express themselves, following the trauma of Super Typhoon Yutu.

According to Aldan, the vision of MYPros is to create a place of hope that the community could visit, which is why MYPros executive director G. Van Gils got the artists to paint hope-inspired murals.

“G. had a vision that, after the storm, with all the stress and the trauma and everything, he wanted a place for hope, a space and a place for hope, so one of the ideas was to have us as artists come and create art, using art as an uplifting way and getting the kids involved in making the art. That way, it gives them a sense of ownership. …We’re trying to use art as an outlet…to create a space that feels welcoming and inviting,” he said.