The Cedar Cultural Center celebrated its 35th anniversary on Saturday with a “Community Paint Day,” inviting Cedar Riverside residents and community members to join Minneapolis artists Leslie Barlow and Hibaaq Ibrahim in creating a mural that reflects the neighborhood’s vibrant music and arts scene.
The Doula Soul Collective provided a soundtrack for the day, spinning a fusion of African rhythms, funk, soul, jazz, cumbia, disco, hip hop and reggae. The event also featured games and chalk for participants to decorate the plaza.
Located in the heart of Cedar Riverside, The Cedar serves as a live music hub for international performers, independent singer-songwriters, and emerging bands. The center also hosts workshops, artist residencies, dance performances, spoken word, and community events.
“It’s our 35th anniversary and we wanted to do something special to commemorate that,” said Michelle Woster, the executive director at the Cedar. “We were looking around for some local muralists and we talked to Leslie and Hibaaq individually to see if one of them wanted to do the mural, but on their own, they were like ‘let’s work together on it,’ which was perfect.”
The mural features a band composed of a Somali woman at the microphone with an electric guitar, a Black woman at the piano, and a violinist, set against the backdrop of native plants and flowers.
“Musicians representing different cultures is something that I find isn’t always represented in art,” Ibrahim said. “There was a woman wearing a hijab who came by and said she’s never seen a muslim woman on a mural before and we were like ‘that’s what we’re doing it for!’”
Stephanie Cook, a nurse in Hennepin County, came with coworkers to contribute to the mural.
“A lot of my folks and the people I work with live in this community so, I was out and about the other day and saw that this event was going on and just wanted to put my little stamp on the world,” she said. “My older son performed spoken word here a few years ago so I love what they’re doing for the community.”
Carolyn Roby, a longtime Cedar patron, expressed her excitement to paint despite the 15-minute time slots for each participant.
“I was hoping that I could paint all five hours,” she said. “I come to The Cedar for events and I’m on their mailing list, so I just got an email about this. I draw and paint but I’m fascinated to learn more about how these two young women organize a mural project.”
Barlow and Ibrahim started the mural on Tuesday, June 4, infusing Barlow’s multicultural art with Ibrahim’s colorful and abstract depictions of nature.
“Leslie and I are both independent muralists but we’ve been wanting to collaborate on something for a long time,” Ibrahim said. “I like to call myself a background artist so I create backdrops for places like restaurants and coffee shops, and then Leslie’s murals are more conversational so, it was a cool way of mixing those two.”
Ibrahim, 29, has created more than 40 murals, transforming Twin Cities locations like Flava Cafe, Soomaal House of Art, Eastside Food Co-op, the Metro Transit Lake Street / Midtown Station, and private homes into floral or geometric landscapes. She recently collaborated with Target in March on botanical-themed tech gear for the Hey Day Collection.
“One of my favorite things about community murals is that you can inspire young people,” Ibrahim said. “To see two Black women who are artists full time and are able to sustain themselves is kind of crazy. When I was a kid, I never saw that so being able to be someone like that for a young person is really cool because they’re always told to do something serious or something practical but in today’s world, what does that even mean anymore?”
Barlow, 34, explores ancestral and familial bonds and racial identity in her art. In 2020, she joined Creatives After Curfew, a collective of Black, Indigenous, and artists of color, creating murals on boarded-up businesses across the Twin Cities in response to the murder of George Floyd. Barlow’s work has also been featured on the 2022 Minnesota State Fair poster, on a billboard at George Floyd square, and she has created large-scale oil paintings for Pillsbury House Theatre and Hennepin Health.
Barlow and Ibrahim’s collaborative mural “reflects the performing arts that happens at the Cedar, but also the surrounding community and neighborhood,” Barlow said.
The new mural is not the first to grace the Cedar’s walls. A 2008 piece by artist Jordan Malcom Hamilton, in collaboration with the Brian Coyle Center and Hope Community, remains a cornerstone of the area.
Hamilton’s mural, painted with the help of local youth groups, portrays the West Bank with scenes of a bustling light rail station, a fist transforming into the roots of the iconic Cedar Riverside apartments, and flags representing Scandinavian, Latin, East African, Caribbean, and Asian communities that make up the neighborhood.
“I considered asking Leslie and Hibaaq to create a new one across the whole area because that mural is more than 10 years old, but it’s really important to some people and I didn’t want to paint it over,” Woster said.
The new mural project, in partnership with the West Bank Business Association, gained momentum with donations made in memory of Erik Helgeson, a concert enthusiast and frequent volunteer at the Cedar.
“He passed away in his 30s and his friends and family knew how much he loved this place,” Woster said. “Their donations gave us the confidence we needed to start the project.”
Saturday’s “Community Paint Day” allowed individuals of all ages to paint designated sections of Ibrahim and Barlow’s design, primarily Ibrahim’s botanical background sections.
“It’s really important to me that the neighborhood feels some kind of ownership over the mural because it does become an anchor point in the neighborhood,” Barlow said. “How beautiful is it that people can be like ‘I painted that leaf or I painted that section’? They can always come back to this spot and have that memory.”
The Cedar Cultural Center will extend its 35th anniversary festivities into the summer with a series of free Tuesday night concerts held outdoors at the Cedar Plaza running from July 9 through August 13, 2024.
“With art and music, there are no barriers,” Cook said. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, you can understand the beauty of music and how it makes you feel. I think it’s beautiful that we can all come together and celebrate that.”
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