From canvas to community: Mural program inspires local teens

For the past two weekends, young people have been coming to this boxing gym, participating in a life-changing program, but this program happened outside the ring.

Wesley Luster’s love for art started as far back as he can remember.

“Got started drawing like cartoons and Pokémon and stuff like that,” said OKC artist Wesley Luster.

Searching for ways to pass on his love for art, he applied for a grant through the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition to get supplies to start a mural painting program to change the community.

“A lot of kids, they’ve never used a paintbrush and now they can say they painted a mural,” said Luster.

“Pretty fun learning new things and learning how to use a brush,” said 14-year-old mural painter Juan Estrada.

Luster chose to paint the word heritage as an inspiration to all the diversities that frequent the gym. 

“So, anybody can look at that and pull their own personal story from that,” said Luster.

Stroke by stroke, lessons were learned in every aspect of the project.

“It helped me learn how to look at the bigger picture instead of just one thing at a time,” said 18-year-old mural painter Alexus Mooney.

The key takeaway is to not let a small mistake stop you from finishing

“You can mess up, but it’s never too late to fix what you have done,” said 14-year-old mural painter Sabestgen Guyton.

“Wes was saying happy little accidents, so that definitely helped. Just turned it into something great even if we made a little mistake,” said Mooney.

“When I mess up, it feels like the end of the world, but when I had a happy accident here, it was like no, we’re growing off of it,” said Guyton.

The goal is to paint more murals all over the city, to support their efforts or participate, visit Luster’s website www.wesleyluster.com or on Instagram @wesleyluster.art