Last Saturday, June 7th, was the kind of summer Saturday where everything in Urbana feels slightly more possible. Inside Krannert Center for the Performing Arts something had already begun to settle into place long before the event began. People arrived without spectacle. They brought yoga mats, blankets, wheelchairs, children, and journals. Some came in pairs, others alone. There was no hierarchy in the way they entered or sat. Community gathered full of cheer and excited to witness the unveiling of Harmony Through Beads’ highly anticipated project.
On Krannert Center’s Stage 5 stood the reason we’d come: a 5-by-5-foot beaded mural, veiled until its appointed moment. The culmination of over a year of workshops, stories, and volunteer labor, Harmony Through Beads had grown from a modest idea — teach a few beading techniques and share a few stories — to something with less predictable outlines.
The project, led by artist and organizer Vivianne Velazquez, unfolded through a series of free, public workshops. Participants learned ancient beading techniques. They listened. They shared stories, and then stitched them. Nearly 200 community members contributed more than 1300 hours of labor. Not one stitch was automated.
“All of the workshops were intentionally mindful and meditative,” Velazquez told the audience. “All were free and open to the public. And the public responded.”
The mural’s surface is difficult to describe without defaulting to metaphor, but maybe metaphor is part of the point. A large eye, heavy-lidded, weeps a river of shimmering blue that meets a rainbow in the middle. A sun behind the eye leans outward like a halo. There is a dove in one quadrant, a butterfly in another. A whale rises below, framed by flowers and grasses so detailed they appear to move if you stare too long. The longer one looks, the more symbolic weight accumulates.
But the symbolism doesn’t float above the work; it’s embedded in it. During the Q&A, artist and co-facilitator Kirsten Cale pointed to specific plants — honeysuckle, tulsi basil, poppies, and marigolds. “All of these have healing properties and associations,” she said. Nothing in the mural was chosen for visual impact alone. Everything had meaning. Even the act of meticulously stitching the vibrant scarlet background hexagons.
“Stitching is, itself, organic and alive and active,” Velazquez explained. “The act of doing it connects us to ancestral ties in all cultures and languages. There are techniques here from Haiti, Indigenous American cultures, Ireland, and Puerto Rico. It’s truly a masterpiece of human connectivity.”
Before the reveal, the room participated in a sound bath and meditation led by Velazquez and musicians. The resonance of the crystal bowls didn’t fill the space so much as rearrange it. There was no clapping, no commentary. Just a shared stillness, the kind that can’t be scheduled or explained.
Cale addressed the audience shortly before the mural was unveiled. “This piece also represents so much healing. I came to it at a point in my life when I needed deep healing, and the timing was perfect.” She met Velazquez while showing her work at Common Ground. The project arrived just when she needed to remember that hands can restore what words cannot.
Lena Makdah, the project’s third co-facilitator, picked up the thread. “I was invited in to join this daunting task as well,” she said. “It was so important to the foundation of this work that every participant was able to bring their own story to the work and learned about other people’s histories and stories. All of that energy is in this final piece. It’s living, breathing, organic.”
The mural was unveiled with limited fanfare. Just a few hands pulling back fabric. Conversations fell away. People stood. Some reached for their phones. Others just admired it. The reds and golds were so vivid they felt almost unreasonable. In a way, the mural looked like something that shouldn’t have been possible. At least not here. Not now. But there it was.
Krannert’s Stage 5, which sits at the soft fault line between town and university, was a fitting place to gather. It asks very little from its visitors. And on this particular day, it gave something in return.
It’s easy, especially in cities shaped by institutions, to treat art as something imported. Something that arrives fully formed, on loan from somewhere else. Harmony Through Beads rejects that idea outright. This was art built by hands that live here, in neighborhoods with sidewalks that crack in winter and bloom with weeds in spring. It does not speak on behalf of anyone because it speaks on behalf of each of the almost 200 volunteers who stitched.
More than a mural, it is a record of proximity. This is what can happen when people sit together and pass the time. What happens when they learn techniques that weren’t taught in school, and offer stories no one asked them to write down.
Velazquez called the collective experience a celebration of resistance, full of joy experienced as revolution. It’s hard to argue. In a year already packed with digital noise and cultural whiplash, Harmony Through Beads feels like a different kind of proposition. Less a counter-narrative than a refusal to narrate. The work represented a collective pause fueled by quiet acts of presence.
As the crowd drifted out, some stayed behind to read the placards. Children pointed to butterflies. Strangers talked softly. Several people moved closer to take it all in, unhurried. There was no official call to action. Just a lingering.
No mural can hold everything. But this one holds more than most. And it’s not finished, not really. That’s its power. Like a story handed down in pieces, it invites you to come closer.
The mural now lives in the lobby of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, where it will remain through early September 2025. There are hopes to share it with other communities, to let it travel and gather new meaning in new places. But for now, it belongs to us. Wander in. Let the colors catch you. Stand still long enough, and it might tell you a story.
Harmony Through Beads Mural
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Lobby
500 S Goodwin
Urbana
June 9 through September 8th
Summer Hours: M through Su 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. (excluding holidays)
