The Gulf Blue Line mural is located at the University of Houston Clear Lake on a large hallway way wall near the Art Gallery. The Gulf Coast is painted by Geraldina Wise and UH students with a live mural interactive painting experience during the Sustainable Stories Film Festival test screening of a Gulf Coast Love Story film. The #GulfCoastLove heart was designed by Dayna Reggero and taken to new levels with shades of humid reds, the indigo Gulf Blue Line, and waters from the Gulf.
Geraldina Wise
BIOGRAPHY
Geraldina, a multi-disciplinary artist, began her art education at the age of 10, on the ravines of the San Salvador Volcano, under the tutelage of Violeta Bonilla, a protégé of the muralist Diego Rivera. Her artist voice is inspired by the vast intellectual patrimony left by her Maya ancestry, and how everything they studied was to help the future Maya survive with the planet. A graduate in Architecture/Art/Art History of Rice University ’83, BArch ’85, and then a student at Glassell School of the MFAH, and printmaking at Rice University, her practice is research based, and at the intersection of art+science. Among the major themes that she explores are the urgency to renegotiate humanity’s relationship with the planet, and our coexistence and connectivity with each other. Her most recent solo exhibit in Houston-Recorder of Time/Escribana del Tiempo- had as a unifying theme the tracks that we are leaving on the planet, and the motto “we ARE the planet”. She is artist-in-residence at the Cullen College of Engineering at UH, at the BRAIN center, with lead researcher Dr. Contreras Vidal, continuing the Nahual Project research with AI. Geraldina has exhibited in Paris, and will be representing her native country and people at the Latin American exhibit at UNESCO, Paris, in 2023.
Connect on Instagram @Wise_Arts
ARTIST STATEMENT
My first mural…at University of Houston Clear Lake in the hallway next to the Art Gallery. Live painted as part of the Sustainable Stories Film Festival and Art Exhibit. I thought I was prepared- I had multiples of every tool in the trade, more like everything I own. Gulf Blue Line- we are the planet, is a mural about the interconnected ness of the entire Gulf Coast region, and environmental equity. Sponsored by Gulf Coast Murals. I was hoping for a student helper or two. Instead, what Dayna Reggero, filmmaker and friend of sustainability, and I found was a wonderfully diverse students and professors who were engaged and open to a new experience of painting a community mural. 2,3,4,7 students at a time would drop everything from their backs and join the pushing of paint. I became the teacher, director, cheerleader. Not one person was turned down. The artists became enthralled, enthused, enamored with pushing paint, empowered, and joyful. Live painting a 9x18 was never going to be easy, I just wasn’t prepared for the love fest that kept on going. It was a true community effort, and possibly one of the most rewarding and joyful art making I have experienced. Art is a safe place, that was proven over and over today. Gulf Blue Line- we are the planet!
