Gloria I Rivera & b.unity - Cloud Walker

Hello. My name is Gloria. I Rivera. I am a selftaught artist, muralist and teaching artist from the south side of chicago. I was invited by the elmhurst art museum to participate in this project. 

Standing before you is amaya. Her superhero name is cloud Walker. Amaya, born and raised in another galaxy, is a half human, half alien being. She is able to read minds, has intangible abilities, and is capable of producing powerful energy blast from her hands. 

Her father is an african american human of ghanaian descent. Her mother is an alien from a distant galaxy on a planet called kalon. In her possession, she has several items that have been gifted to her by various family members. 

These items assist her in daily life in various ways. She wears a trench coat with embedded adinkra symbols that provide her with shielding protection. Underneath that trench coat, she wears a cloak that allows her to teleport anywhere that she pleases and makes her invisible when she pulls the hood over her head. 

The cloak is a sentient being that communicates with her telepathically. She also has a shape shifting afro pick that turns into whatever she wants. She often chooses to use it as a sword on both wrists. 

She wears. Special bracelets that help harness her energy blasts that come from her hands. Removal of these bracelets would be detrimental since she has not learned how to fully control her power yet. 

Amaya is a cocreation between myself and the nonforprofit organizations of Creative Unity and Focus. Creative Unity is a youth program of B Unity that uses the arts, mentorship and community collaboration to address public health and social justice issues, promote change and unify their communities. 

For this project, Creative Unity chose to partner with Focus due to their commitment to community collaboration. In total, there were eleven young men and women that participated in this project with me. 

For this project, I decided that my main role was to facilitate as a facilitator. My main focus was to encourage, aid and guide the other participants through the creative process. The way that I like to go about this is to pull out as much as I can from the group and put those details together like a puzzle. 

Once I have obtained as much as I can from them, then I look at everything as a whole and fill in the blanks where it's needed. Filling in the blanks is how I get to contribute as an artist and weave in my artistic aesthetic. 

I approached each session as specific phase in the project. Of course, everything did not go as planned and there were moments where we had to pivot, revisit and sometimes pass over certain things. At the beginning of each session, we would. 

Review and discuss what was done on the last session. At the end of each session, we would summarize what they worked on and take, and I would take notes on what was developed during that time. In between each session, I would then take the things that were discussed, sort them out, and compile them into something that they would continue to build on the following session, in the short time that we were together, we went from ideation to design and the first steps of creation. 

This character is truly a creation of the members of Creative Unity and Focus. She came out of their brainstorming sessions and ability to work together. I helped them bring those ideas together to create concepts and ultimately the final design. 

We end our last session with the group assisting me with the initial painting of the character. After that session, I brought it into my space to complete it. As of right now, as I am recording this, almost finished painting the character, there's just a few more details left to complete her.