As a community project, Bola de Nieve Church invited Carlitos Skills & a few other artist to do a mural at their church. This has always been in Carlitos bucket list, so when he got invited to be apart of this project, he was super pumped. After a 9 hour flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, reality hit. The team quickly realized the diversity that this country faces. Being in a country like this, really grounds your feet, and makes you appreciate everything you have back home.
The two other artist that teamed up with Carlitos were Dovente from Dominican Republic and Apuros from Brazil, that’s a local Pichação (Brazilian graffiti). When the team began the design for the mural, Carlitos’ main focus was to make the piece look like one same artist composed it. The artist all made their designs individually and Carlitos’ incorporated the pieces into one, and they quickly began working on the mural. The second day the artist were painting, they went out to explore the city of Sao Paulo, to get inspiration & get to know the city little more in depth. The team visited Binho Ribeiro’s gallery/studio, and that’s when Carlitos got really inspired by the style of Brazil. As the team continued to work on the mural they saw a lot of the behind the scenes of the church, as the location the mural was inside a church.
Between the busy days of painting, the team had time to get to know each other, and do activities such as having a BBQ which is where they came up with a name for the crew, which is “Barbie Q”.
Carlitos and the other guys really saw how much this church wanted to help its community and use this piece to inspire the young that this could be their retreat. The community not only loved the final piece but went everyday of the process to see the guys work, and show their apprecation. Once this 4-5 day project was finished, the church hosted an event with break dancing, rage music, motorcyclists, and different cmmunity artists apart from the 3 that created the mural. All this done by the church itself, with no help from the government, to inspire the younger generation and bring back some joy for the older generation. During the event, they presented Carlitos’, Dovente, and Apuros on stage, with a few details and the appreciation for creating such a beautiful mural in their home.
“This was a trip that not only helped me connect with different artist, but really grounded me. You sometimes think that where you live, it’s bad. But not until you see what other countries go through, scarcity of basic necessities, crime, how day to day life is in other places. I am thankful for the opportunity to do something so simply for a beautiful community.”
-Carlitos Skills
