“I think I should start making art again”
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| The intentions and prayers for the Earth were embedded here then covered with gold leaf. |
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| Altadena Fire Mural Project, 2026, with golden prayers and us circled in red (Ekaterina Sky) |
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| Channeled inspiration for artful beauty |
Six months after the Los Angeles fires, we built an art wall in Altadena. There were not many walls left to paint on, so we built one on the empty lot where the vegan cafe Oh Happy Days used to be.
Over four days the foothill neighborhood came and wrote their prayers and intentions to be sealed into the golden sphere at the center of the mural, some in English, some in Spanish, some in many other languages. One was a single name. One asked for the soil to become clean again. Then we sealed every one of those prayers under gold leaf.
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| A gold embedded Prayer for the Earth |
They are still under there, and nobody can read them.
On the final Sunday of our public art project, a woman came over to tell me about her friend: Her friend had lost her home in the Eaton Fire and had not smiled once in the six months since.
Her friend was at the wall right then, with a glistening brush in her hand. She was smiling. She had just said, “I think I should start making art again.”
I did not go over to her. That moment was hers.
I thought, “She has every fact about what she lost. The facts do nothing for her. A wall, a brush, and her neighbors gave her somewhere to put it, and she picked the brush back up.” That is what I've been trying to say for 20 years! To put it plainly:
“Data hands us the truth.
Beauty is what lets us carry it.”
Knowing is not the hard part. Holding it is. Beauty is what makes the weight bearable enough to keep holding and acting on.
Vote for this talk at SXSW 2027
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| Save the forest, save the animals |
DESCRIPTION: Two decades of painting murals converges on one idea: Shared beauty can hold what words cannot yet reach, a shift that decides what people go on to protect.
After the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena, survivors gathered at a community mural to write their intentions and prayers into the paint. A woman who had not smiled since losing her home picked up a brush. This talk lays out the method behind the shift and how to build it into a strategy that moves people.
SESSION TAKEAWAYS:
Why aesthetic experience shifts emotional orientation faster than data or logical arguments, and what that means for building a movement or campaign.
Art show LA Climate Week '26 - A repeatable method for designing beauty and participation into engagement strategy, instead of attaching them as decoration afterward.
- Real, working examples, a reforestation partnership, a global soil movement, a wildfire recovery mural, proof the method produces outcomes. More
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| UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil |
Send me your stories!
REQUEST: If a moment like that has ever happened to you, I would love to hear it. I am collecting them to inspire others.
Warmly,
Ekaterina Sky, visual artist (ekaterina-sky.com)
Organizer, Life Force Art LLC
- How art can inspire climate action and ocean conservation | Barbara Veiga
- One human species ruled Earth for 2 million years, and it wasn't us
- Let's stop cruel factory farming (action.foe.org)
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| Dr. Jane Goodall promoted a vegan plant-based diet for all humans to save our world. |
- Ekaterina Sky, Aug. 12, 2026; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen B. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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