By BART BUCH, Director of Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts
This summer Semilla has been busy creating peace through beauty on and around Bloomington Avenue South in the Midtown Phillips neighborhood, our home. Last summer our theme was “Together/Juntos,” as coming together again after being separated from the pandemic was thrilling. This year we take that theme a step further with “Blooming Together.” We hope to reflect and create a wave of new togetherness, with us each trying to bloom anew. You are going to see quite a few flowers in the work that is going on, and amongst this new garden we are in, we acknowledge the persistent hardship, desperation and violence in our midst here in Midtown Phillips, and especially on Bloomington Avenue. The situation we are in is complex in this neighborhood, in this time. More complex than we can understand or deal with alone. We also recognize the beautiful blossom of each person and being on Bloomington Avenue as sacred, and the land and sky of Bloomington Avenue as sacred, with a flowering heart. In the work Semilla does this summer we try to hold these two realities with care.
