In Focus: Bemidji Boys & Girls Club, Harmony Co-op Create New Community Mural

Bemidji’s Harmony Food Co-op recently teamed up with the Boys and Girls Club of the Bemidji Area and a local artist to create a community-focused mural.

Harmony Food Co-op, located in downtown Bemidji, decided that they wanted to create an art piece on their street-facing wall that would bring the community together. Earlier this month, they celebrated the unveiling of the painting.

“Everything was really beautiful,” said Savannah, a Youth Development Professional with the Bemidji Boys and Girls Club. “I was kind of telling everyone, I was like, ‘This is kind of emotional just because I know how much time and effort all of the kids put in.’ We had about 18 kids that actually was part of this entire mural. And so seeing it all come together cohesively was really like, ‘Wow, this is really fun.'”

The co-op teamed up with local visual artist Mary Therese to bring the idea to life.

“A passion of mine is to do community art. So all the projects that you see on the side of the building here were all done with different community agencies,” Therese explained. “What I wanted to do was to involve children.”

And thus, the partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of the Bemidji Area was born.

“To see their inspiration and their excitement and motivation and hope and empowerment through this gives me a breath of life,” said Harmony Food Co-op General Manager Colleen Bakken. “It’s very inspiring to watch.”

But a mural with all of these little details doesn’t come easily. It was finished in small pieces and then put together into one large piece of art. The whole project took about three months to complete.

Boys and Girls Club member Amarachi stated, “We started with stencils, and I feel like this was a full arm workout because I skipped arm day a couple of times to do stenciling.”

The mural itself is of the Tree of Life, a symbol of unity, connection, and strength.

“It’s really pretty outside, and commonly we get stuck in our phones and I will admit, I do that,” said club member Olivia. “And it was really nice to look in books and figure stuff out on how nature can look if you just take a second to look at it.”

“There’s a lot of flowers on here, so it shows kind of a lot of diversity and you can see the different styles from all the people who participated and helped,” said club member Yuuki.

“It says ‘Unity in Diversity.’ You can see all this stuff is different, but also when it’s put together, it’s like one huge piece of art,” added Amarchi. “And I think that’s what’s really special and pretty.”

The project was funded by the 2024 Creative Individuals Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The co-op said that in the future, they want to build frames to be put around the mural.