The artist hadn’t planned to paint his father on the side of the building, or his assistant’s grandmother or a hair stylist’s grandfather.
David Manzanares had pictured five or six grandmothers — his own, and the abeulas of Hispanic storeowners — backlit against a setting sun made of monarch butterflies.
Their faces would dominate the painter’s largest canvas yet, the 70-foot-by-30-foot north wall of Esquina de Los Hispanos, a two-story collection of shops at 11th and G streets.
The piece would honor the connection between past and present, old ways persevering in new lands. And it would make a timely statement about life and death, that COVID-19 was taking a disproportionate toll on Hispanic and Mexican American communities.
The South of Downtown Community Development Organization had planned to commission a mural next year but fast-tracked the artist’s idea this summer. It launched a fundraiser and quickly collected $12,000 — $2,000 more than its goal.
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“It was cool; we did a lot better than expected,†said Kat Wiese, the nonprofit’s community art organizer. “A lot of organizations gave, as well as a lot of individual contributors.â€
Manzanares started painting in early September, about the time his father got sick in Mexico.
He wasn’t worried at first. Venancio Manzanares was 65, in good health and in good shape.
“But he just got worse. It was really hard, really unexpected. But I guess many people have gone through something similar.â€
He’d last seen his father on a trip back to Mexico in late January or February. He remembers a pleasant visit, he said. They shared a good meal, visited the library together, caught up.
“He was really happy, a really nice person. I had good communication with him.â€
His father died Sept. 23, in a hospital, on a ventilator. And Manzanares knew he had to change his original plans, adding Venancio Manzanares to the center of the mural, wearing a suit, a broad smile beneath his mustache.
“When I started, it was not something I wanted to do. But it was a way to say goodbye and spread some deeper feeling. It became even more important to me.â€
Wiese is friends with Manzanares, and she saw how hard he took his father’s death. But she also saw the mural take on a new meaning.
“I hate that the painting became as significant as it is because of that. It felt like a cruel twist of fate. But he put even more into the mural than he would have otherwise, and he was already putting so much into it.â€
Next to his father, he painted his grandmother Juana, in the traditional clothing he remembers her wearing when he was a child.
And next to her, he painted his wife’s grandmother, who died in Sutherland last year at 99. Rose Kennedy was German, not Hispanic. But Grandma Rosie was part of the story he was trying to tell on the wall, he said, because she had two great-grandchildren of Mexican descent.
The mural kept growing. Manzanares had help with the project, and an assistant’s grandmother had died of COVID, so he added her, too.
Others approached, asking that he include their fathers. A hair stylist in the building wanted her grandfather on the wall; he died in Texas before he could come visit her. Manzanares had a hard time saying no, and his original plan to depict a half-dozen grandmothers doubled to a dozen men and women before he ran out of room.
The requests resonated with Wiese. “It’s kind of overwhelming to think about how many people could have been included in the mural. We probably need to start making more art.â€
Still, even after it was done, others found a way to honor their loved ones. Manzanares had finished in time for the Day of the Dead celebration in early November, and dozens of mourners made the artwork an altar, filling the sidewalk below with photos, flowers and food for lost friends and family.
Wiese, who helped raise money for the project, is thrilled with how it turned out. She called it the most important mural in Lincoln: an expression of shared grief and loss, but also a celebration of the lives of the people we love.
“And we can’t forget that when we lose the people we love, their history can live on. It’s important to remember their stories and to share their stories.â€
Manzanares is pleased with it, too, even though it’s not the painting he intended. He spent hundreds of hours working on the mural, but more than a month later, he still returns to 11th and G as often as possible, where his father is smiling down on him, larger now than life.
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