Tyler Wack

Professor Smith

English 101-029

17 October 2016

Social Justice and Community Mural

Joann Moreira created a mural of a tree that is formed by different words that symbolize Social Justice. The mural shows that the overall message is about Social Justice and community. The purpose of the mural is for people to see all of the different words and think of theme being equality and unity. Despite everyone in the world being different, everyone is equal and unified in a way. Joann Moreira uses many different elements in the mural such as, contrasting color schemes, the differing sizes of the words, and the shape of the tree that connect together to create this overall message and theme. 

The first element that helps display the theme of equality and unity is the different colors and color scheme used in the mural. The artist used several different colors in creating this mural. She uses light and dark green leaves to outline the top of the tree and give the tree its shape. The mix of light and dark green leaves really makes the outline pop. She mainly uses red, orange, brown, and black for the words. I think she uses contrast based on the colors she used when deciding what color to write a word. Contrast draws attention to the item that is most different among other elements. You can use color contrast to draw attention to an element in your design that is more important or is more relevant to your design as a whole. She shows this by putting the more important words in red and orange and the not as important, but still somewhat relevant words in brown and black. The red and orange words really pop in the mural and your eyes are drawn to those words. The artist designed it in this way to show the importance of these words in the overall message of social justice and community. The brown and black words are more sublevels in the mural and are ways we can achieve the goal of social justice, equality, and unity. I would also state that the artist uses analogous colors in the mural. These are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Since they are right beside each other on the color wheel, they are very similar. That means that they have very little contrast, so they blend very well together. The red, orange, and brown words have a nice harmonious blend which leads back to the theme of being unified. They all go together and form the tree. Another important aspect of the mural to look at is the white background. White is a very light and neutral color so it is very easy to see the mural. The white background could be a symbol for unity in the community and a fresh start. The way the artist uses color helps show the theme of social justice, unity, and equality.

The next element that helps create this theme is the differing sizes of the words that are used in the mural. All of the words that the artist put in her mural differ in their size. This is a very important element in that, like color, it can also represent importance of a word to the overall meaning and theme of the mural. In the mural, the biggest words are social justice and community. This leads us to believe that social justice and community is the overall message and goal of this mural. It is what draws the viewer’s attention and shows the main point. The mural has medium and small size words that surround the larger words. The medium and small words are ways that the goal can be achieved. This shows that the ways to achieve a goal surround the overall message and goal. The artist goal of doing the differing sizes in the words is for a person to walk up to the mural and their eyes are drawn to social justice and community which is the overall message. The viewer’s then look at the rest of the words in the mural and find parts to achieving equality and unity. The size of the words may be different, but they are unified together to create a tree shape.

The final element that really helps bring the entire mural together is the artist designed and set up the mural into the shape of a tree. The purpose of her designing it in the shape of a tree is to represent life. The tree symbolizes the community as a whole and they are unified. The community must grow together and form a strong bond. The tree could also be a symbol of strength and show the community should become unified and grow. The community should come together as a group to end injustice and social inequality. The mural tries to help with this by giving the overall goal and then putting sublevels that go toward achieving social justice, unity, and equality. Joann Moreira creates the tree by writing different words that relate to social justice and community. She wrote the words both horizontally and vertically to help form the shape of the tree. The words form the basic shape of the tree and the artist outlined the top of the tree with light and dark green leaves. The outlining leaves could represent how all of the people in the community are different. They may be different, but they are all unified and equal in the community.

The mural created by Joann Moreira uses many different elements such as, contrasting color schemes, the differing sizes of the words, and the shape of the tree that connect together to create this overall message and theme. She uses contrasting colors and analogous colors to make certain parts of the mural pop, but also making everything blend and look unified which relates to the theme. She also uses a white back ground to make the entire mural pop to the viewer, but it also symbolizes unity and equality. She also uses differing sizes of the words to create the shape of the tree and show the importance of words. The words are unified by being shaped in the form of a tree. Both the color and size of the words bring the viewer’s attention to the mural and show the importance of a word. The artist designed the mural in the shape of a tree to represent life and the community as a whole. The people in a community are unified together like the leaves are unified by a tree. The mural uses different elements that work together to create a unified mural. Just like people in a community work together to create social justice, unity and equality in the community.

Works Cited

Moreira, Joann. Social Justice and Community. 2016, University of California Santa Cruz, http://collegenine.ucsc.edu/getinvolved/murals/muralgallery.html 