The mural is designed by Grace Rogers and incorporates colors from the surrounding environment - rust red, light yellow, sky blue, and sage green. Lotuses are everywhere, painted on interior panels, centered on the floor, and dangling from the ceiling. The outside, however, is white. Elle Travis, Executive Director of Yes Arts, said this was intentional.
"I got to thinking, if we paint the outside of the mural, it's going to look like it sticks out with a sore thumb because it's just a massive mural in the middle of a residential area," said Travis. "So I thought, why don't we tuck it inside, kind of like what we do in recovery? You know, we hide a lot of ourselves; outwardly we might look okay, but on the inside we've got a lot going on."
Previous projects include a mural on the side of the Yes Arts building painted by law enforcement and participants in the Franklin County Drug Court, and a mural at the police department painted by law enforcement and young people affected by incarceration.
Travis says the idea for these collaborations originated with Dustin Bowman, Frankfort’s former chief of police who retired earlier this year.
"He said, 'I have this idea,'" recalled Travis. "'I want my people in my department to be able to be real. I want them to be able to see people in recovery on a different level, not when we're engaged with them when they're having the worst day of their life. We want to make an impact and do things different.'"
Travis says her initial reaction was to protect her residents, who are often traumatized by interactions with the justice system and law enforcement.
"When he found out that they were awarded the grant, I said, 'Well, the first phase has to be officer training,'" recalled Travis. "'You all cannot engage with people until you have better knowledge about the people.' And so we did three months of training at the beginning phase, and at the same time that the officers were in training, the participants, the residents, were in art therapy with Yes Arts."
Bowman retired earlier this year, but current chief of police Derek Napier hand-built the gazebo’s “final step”.
"When the guys came in and the gazebo people came and leveled it all, it was a lot higher off the ground than we ever anticipated," said Travis. "So yesterday [Napier] came and built the step and then Grace painted it."
The gazebo will be used as a multifunctional community space, with Fresh Start facilitating life skills classes, art and music programs, and social events.