Lucinda Y Hinojos | La Morena | Muralist and Community Builder
After six months of not traveling, I found myself in Phoenix.
I used this opportunity to reach out to an incredible artist + activist => artivist, Lucinda Y Hinojos who goes by La Morena and uses murals as her medium. On a 103 degree afternoon Lucinda and I sat across from each other - in masks, outside - at The Churchill in Phoenix. The Churchill is a cultural collaborative hub of restaurants, music venues, murals and artisans shops that is working on very limited hours but was serendipitously hosting a virtual live-streamed concert while we were chatting.
Behind The Churchill is an alleyway with a number of murals and where Lucinda’s piece #MMIW is located. MMIW is in honor of and brings attention to the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in our country. This is a piece that, as Lucinda said, just came to her. As an indigenous woman with deep beliefs in spirit guides she often feels she is pushed in service to her murals. It is this piece that helped to propel her swift rise into becoming a nationally recognized muralist. In our hour together we touched on everything from the importance of mentors who “oftentimes believe in you before you do”, to the need to rip off your blinders and “leverage the resources that are in front of you” in order to push forward your dream and how sometimes just survival is how we learn leadership.
But before any of her success, first she had to believe in herself.
While her formal art training has been minimal she grew up with a grandfather who was an artist and felt comfortable with her creative side. And as a mother of three she is also a fighter and a survivor leaving behind a domestic abuse situation where she learned the importance of her inner strength. As a self-led leader she instinctively knows how to pull others together and leverage the power of community to amplify the voices of those that aren’t heard.
Risk taking is embedded in Lucinda’s being and when she felt she had enough traction in her art she quit her FT professional job in the banking field in 2018 and didn’t look back. Even now during Covid19 she is digging deeper into her art and the business behind it.
Lucinda had the organizational and leadership skills she needed from being in the business world for years but only in 2012 did she put them to work for the artistic community. A deep desire to pull the arts community together to help in her own healing process was the initial catalyst and then her inner artist took over as she dived head first into her own mural making. Lucinda knew what she had to do and did it and over the course of three years her art has been featured in galleries, solo shows and art magazines. She is also one of GoDaddy’s featured artists which has helped her leverage her art on a much larger platform with her video that they produced and promoted having close to 20,000 views.
Like the rest of the world, Covid19 has deeply impacted her personal and professional life. Since March of 2020 she has lost 12 projects, everything from murals to artist talks and events but Covid19 has also given her a chance to breathe, focus and re-tool to maximize her desire to serve humanity. In addition she is focusing on cleaning up her website to increase and streamline her sales and commissions so when the world starts opening up again she will be in a strong place to rebuild in a thoughtful impactful way.
For a great in-depth interview and to learn more about Lucinda and her work check out this Podcast from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina.
Thank you Lucinda for your generosity and giving voice through your art to many who are struggling.
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