 Aloha, and welcome to Crossroads in Learning. I am your host, Keisha King, and we are still in the midst of the coronavirus COVID-19. We are entering our second rounding into our third month, and we are still fighting with this, but we're making progress. Today we're going to talk with a special guest about how we've chosen to reflect and refocus during this battle. Welcome with me to the show, Estria Mayashiro. Aloha, Estria. Aloha, Keisha. Aloha, everybody. It's so good to have you here as we're going to talk about redirecting our focus as it pertains to COVID-19. And why don't you start off by telling us about your organizations, Mele Mirals, and Estria Foundation. Yeah, so my name is Estria. I'm from Kaimaki, on the island of Oahu. Born and raised, I've been doing art since I hopped a fence and did graffiti when I was a kid. From there I fell in love with painting walls, went to San Francisco, got to paint many places, have a little role in the graffiti style writing movement in the Golden Age of San Francisco. And then from there I got the opportunity to build this nonprofit and merge my community work with my artwork. And so we did programs like water rights, rights because we were graffiti writers, and we did murals in 11 different places. South Africa, Palestine, Philippines, South America, Central America. I didn't even go to most of these places. And then from there we did a program in Hawaii called Mele Mirals, which is a series of murals that partners with schools. That one is, we finished number 60 at Kaneohe Elementary recently. I thought it was going to be 20. That one, that program's still going strong because it has rich components in the Hawaiian culture, the spirituality, the wellness and whole being, you know, the meditation piece. I want to ask you about all of that in just a little bit. I want to find out, you know, you've mentioned all of these places that your art has made it to, whether you've actually gone there. But what is the mission of the organizations that you formed? Yeah, so the mission of the Esther Foundation is really to raise awareness on critical human and environmental issues. And we chose the longer approach to that by going into education. So our programs primarily serve young people, actually from kindergarten through college. And then from there to expanded to teaching teachers. So we offer professional development courses. We offer classes in schools in Hawaii as well. Okay. Now, how did you get involved with the Hawaii Department of Education? Because it sounds as if at one point you were a graffiti artist and now you are an educator for the DOE. Tell us, how did that connection begin? Well, for about a year before we did the first melee mural, we met with several different people in the community, probably about three to five meetings a week for a year and said, this is the project we want to do. Do you guys have any suggestions? What do you think? And a lot of people gave their input. And so we got introduced to a number of schools. We did a pilot one first where we invited people from Kona, from Kamehameha schools, from different places. And everybody came together and did one. So, all right, this looks, this works pretty good. Let's try it. So from there in the beginning, we had to call other schools and ask if we could partner with them to do it. But now because people have heard about it, there's actually a waiting list and they're calling us to partner with us. So it's really a blessing to be in that position. So just so we're clear, you have melee murals in the Hawaii public school system and you are completing murals at each school. Is that correct? Or at schools, at certain schools? Yes, most times they're in schools and sometimes it's near a school. But because we're a nonprofit, we partner with those schools and work together with them. Okay, now tell us who is completing the mural? Is it just you and a team of artists or are students involved? So we partner with the kids. We bring in a team of artists. I've led the majority of them and sometimes other artists lead them too. Sometimes there's more than one artist. We work with the students by teaching them meditation and taking them on excursions or hukai in their areas they get to learn about their place and develop a connection to that place so that we hope that in the long run, when they get older, they'll be in positions of influence to embrace their kuleana, to take care of that place, their responsibility to care for it. And so that's how the murals work. We work with the kids, teach them meditation. They get ideas through the meditation. We put their ideas together on a board. Once everybody approves it, then we paint, we paint, we teach them how to paint and the students then act as leaders and they teach their schoolmates how to paint. They come for a say an hour to the wall. They tell them what the mural is about and then they actually work with them to paint. So it sounds, and we're looking at some of the pictures now that demonstrate that students are working together. They are actually on the wall painting alongside some of the artists. But can you talk to me about this meditation piece that happens before paint begins? Yeah, so in the meditation process that we've been taught and we pass on, we teach the students to ground, to calm their minds, clear all their thoughts out and to be able to be present in the moment, to hear, to feel, sense the wind, the birds, whatever. And then from there, we ask the land what it wants. We ask for inspiration and guidance and then the students get ideas whether they're pictures or feelings or some of them get words, whatever. However the ideas come to them, we share them with the group. We start sketching them down on paper and we're looking for commonalities. So if six people have the same idea from that one meditation that we know that's confirmation because they weren't talking about those ideas, they just sat down quietly and received those ideas. So it's about being in touch. And it's also about teaching them our role and our place that we're under the heavens to receive guidance but we're on the earth to take care of it. And that's our place, you know? Hmm, that's very interesting that you would say that during this time when we are indeed on the earth and there's so much going on with this pandemic. Talk to us about how COVID-19 has changed the way that you work with your students. We're all out of school right now. How is, what effect has that had on your work? Yeah, the COVID has been a real challenge for us because we had to shift our focus from in-person classes. The murals are obviously on hold with the lockdown but we shifted to using things like Zoom and Webex to have classes online. We have to prepare our lesson plans ahead of time and share them. In some schools, like Cahill Elementary, we were able to print out the packets and pass them out when the parents came in to pick up things for their students. So in different ways, we were able to share with them and then we do classes during those calls and then they have to draw some things or paint some things. We passed out supplies earlier and then they got to share what they created back in the class. We use Google Classrooms to give out assignments and feedback as well. Okay, wonderful. So you have class that is still actively taking place even though you can't be together in the physical presence as you would normally. Now, here's my question with regard to what you're currently doing because in addition to working with students on a mural, you are also stationed at Kaimuki High School where there are several murals. Can you tell us how many murals do you have there on campus? Yes, so we're based at Kaimuki High School. We're blessed to be given a space there to operate and we offer classes there during school and after school that are free to all the students. In the last few years of being based on that campus, the students and us have continued to paint murals every semester. So now I think there's about maybe 17 murals on campus. 17 murals on campus. Oh, wow. That's great. That's a lot of murals, but that's great. Especially for a short period of time, I understand you've only been based at Kaimuki for a few years. How many years have you been there? Oh, I don't know, three or four years. Okay. Okay. Yeah, 17 murals in that time. That's still, that's a lot. That's, you've been very busy. I've seen some. In fact, we're showing some now of auntie and let's see, there's the one with the soldier and the gecko all there. I know recently you gave a tour of Kaimuki High School. Can you talk to us about what that tour was about? What did that entail? Yes. There was a professor from UH, Aya Mylani. She wanted her, she, they teach people that are teaching. So they wanted them to come down and see this project-based program that we have. Our murals are melee murals, and then our classes are called Halao Paheona, which is visual arts class. So we try to share what we can about our culture, our stories, our perspectives, our Hawaiian way of looking at things, approaching things. So in the course of sharing those things, we hope that it gets infused into the culture. So as part of that class, we opened up the campus to tours and we had our students break up into groups and take people around campus. And they only had enough time to cover about 10 murals per group, but I think there was three or four groups. So, and they had quite a lot of people, good turnout. So we plan to do that again and offer it more to the public on an ongoing basis. I was there for that tour and we just looked at a few pictures from that event, which was, as you mentioned, a really good turnout. What impressed me was the interaction with the students. Each student served as a guide, is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Students have to practice their public speaking and leadership skills and assert themselves. And they did. And they were very knowledgeable and did a great job on that. Now, we're gonna take a short break, but when we come back, we're gonna talk for a few minutes about your career before you began working with the DOE. And we're gonna talk about what new chapters you may explore beyond this time if you decide to do anything else. So thank you so much for being with us. We're gonna take a quick break. 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My goal is to decrease pain all over the world, inspiring people to take better care of their bodies to enjoy life to the fullest. I look forward to hearing from you. Aloha and welcome back to Crossroads in Learning. I'm your host, Keisha King, and we're having a great discussion about resetting and refocusing while working in art and our public schools. We're speaking with Estria Maeshiro, co-founder of Mellie Murals and the Estria Foundation. Estria, welcome back. Thank you. Indeed. So we've discussed and taken a look at a few of your projects that you've completed here in Hawaii, but that's not where your career began. Why don't you take us way back to the 1980s and we'll look at a few of your pictures from then. Why don't you talk about it? I'm not that old. Right, neither am I. We were just babies. Well, yeah, in the 1986, I graduated school here, and so I moved to San Francisco for college and ended up building... Wait, wait. You're not Hawaiian if you don't give shout out to your local high school. Oh, yeah. I actually went to Iolani High School. And from there, I went to San Francisco for college, and by the first week of being there, we're painting the project rooftop, so really jumped into it. And painting there was a turning point for me because I wanted to be one of the best there. It's a really little math under my butt. I ended up making a career out of it there and then eventually moving back home to share what I do with here. Okay. What caused you to have the desire to make the transition to come back to Hawaii? I think I always thought... I think, yeah, I always thought I would come back. And then after one day sort of wake it up and go, oh, my God, I've been in California for how long? I got a goal. And I also think you've got to be real careful and intentional with what you say out loud because Kupuna, your ancestors are listening. And so one day I had said, I think I'd like the majority of my life's work to come from my people back home. I'm talking about my artwork, my community work. And within a year I moved home and launched the MeleMurals program. Hmm, wonderful. Now, tell us about the movie that is all about your life and that transition for you and the discoveries that came from it. Yeah. We have a documentary called MeleMurals. I think you can watch it on PBS online or something. I'll get you the link. And the filmmaker wanted to cover how a couple of us started off with hip hop and then transitioned into using that for our culture, for our people. It's a great film. I'm not, you know, I can't stand to look at myself in pictures and films, but after I watched it a few times I was like, oh, this is actually a really good piece, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a great story, but there is something really special that you discovered about your own ancestry with, I guess it was while you were doing that project. Can you share with us about that? Yeah, so I'd have to say that in the meditation you're trusting, you have to learn to have faith in the things you cannot see in the messages that you receive and know that you have to be able to distinguish. Well, is that a good message or is somebody playing tricks on me or what, you know? Right. And you have to trust in yourself as well as trusting in what you can't see. Right. So I think the process and the journey has strengthened faith for me and strengthened my confidence in what's out there, what's after this part of our, you know, this life in this part, what's after that. Being able to talk and try to gain knowledge from spirits is an amazing thing because it just changes your whole perspective. Death doesn't hold the same scariness about it that it used to, you know? You know, it's interesting you bring that up right now while we are faced with an incredible number of deaths because of COVID-19. And here on the islands, we're a little bit safer where as very few people have lost their lives due to this virus. But talk to us about, you made some connections with the land during the meditation and discovering what the land wants or what the land has to say. Explain what you mean by all of that. Well, I believe like other Hawaiians that the land, the earth is a living thing. It's just not like a human that has, you know, moving arms, talking mouth, but it holds memories of things that have happened on it before, you know, it could be traumatic, it could be positive. Some places you go, they feel really good. That's pretty much how the earth should feel. Other places you go and you know in your gut, I gotta get out of here. Something's not good about this place or something's not right. And oftentimes it's because something traumatic has happened there and the land, we haven't come in to help it heal, you know, and so it's hanging onto that. So you might have a lot of suicides in that area or a lot of deaths or a lot of bad things, car break-ins, thefts, whatnot. And it's, you know, it's those bad energy things that are lingering. So you gotta bring people in who can perceive those things and help lift it to the light and cleanse it, make it from a low vibration, something dark to a bright high vibration. You know, it can be a pico, a portal of creativity, of new life, birthing. And to a large extent, these murals do that because you're bringing in so many young people, so much energy from different people, all with the same common goal of making something fun, making something beautiful, you know, doing something positive for other people. And that alone shifts the energy of the space. But in the meditation, we teach the children to calm yourself and ask the land, what does it want there? And it may not speak in words, it may speak in images, or, you know, it may speak of stories that have happened before. So like say, a lot of our old Hawaiian stories, people mistakenly call them myths, but they're not myths, they're stories of people. And some things have been changed or exaggerated or whatever through time, you know. But the stories hold lessons, the stories hold value, perspectives, a lot of things. And so a lot of these stories in our books were written down, I don't know, in the 50s or whatever, by some white man with the opportunities to come in and just go around and collect stories and not have to work. So they're written in a style that's hard to sort of digest nowadays. It's pretty dry. And it's sort of like giving you every other line of a story and then you've got to stop and be, sit with it and try to figure out what are those lines in between, you know, and so sitting with the land and it helps you do that. But also because those stories were written at a certain point in time before, it doesn't cover what has happened since that writing of that story till now. For example, in this story of say, Kamapua, the pig god and his lover Pele, they have a fiery relationship. They're opposites, there are two sides of the same coin, but they're opposites. They're both about new life and beginnings. So the lava me, the forest grows, the lava wipes it out, but in time that lava becomes dirt and the forest grows again. And it's this continuity. So in the stories, they just, boom, they don't get along. Seems like Pele almost kills Kamapua because she's mad at him for something. But what you get in meditation and seeking answers is that later on they've made peace and they work together to help people in places. I mean, you wouldn't get that if you just read a book. So there's lots of knowledge out there to be gotten through your gut, through your mouth rather than through your brain and your eyes. I learned so much when you speak, especially about the Hawaiian culture and the beliefs and the story, the history and the background. I'm wondering now, we've been sheltering in place for the most part for just over two months. What do you think the land is saying about this time of respite? Fewer people are in the beach, in the ocean, fewer people are traveling by car and gasoline and things like that are not as heavily in the air. What effect do you think that has had? Well, I think it's really obvious that we have been going down a bad path for such a long time, so much violence, so much treating the earth like a resource to plunder rather than a loving living thing to nurture. And that's why in our stories, we consider it, this part of the island is the older brother and this part's like our mom. And you think of the sacredness of places in the same way you think of like, I would never hurt my family, right? So you've got to take care of it in the same way you take care of your family. And it's like we have been the virus on this earth and now it has taken a virus to slow us down and stop enough, pause enough to look at those things. We've been suffocating the earth, we've been choking it, we've been polluting its bloodlines, and now this thing is in the blood, it's in our breath. We have poisoned the oceans, the airs, the waters and now own air is poisoned to each other. We are affecting each other's lungs. The virus is attacking our lungs and it's making us look at like, oh, we've been choking the earth so we need to change what we're doing. You can tell your visual artist, I could very easily visualize exactly what you were saying and hoping that the earth is forgiving and that we can turn this around and continue to do the things necessary. In 30 seconds or less, can you tell us what things would be necessary or what positives we could take from this moving forward? I think people have learned the value of slowing down and going back and spending time in the things that matter most in our lives, relationships, love, nurturing, you know, gardening, people getting back to fishing, the old simple ways. We don't need all this consumption, all these plastic things and we need to take care of this place. Bottom line, we need to take care of this place and the little art and meditation can help us do just that. I wanna thank you so much Estria for joining today and I hope to see more of your work and we've been looking at it while you were speaking and so we're hoping you continue doing what you're doing, you're educating so many people, all of our keiki that have been a part of your projects and your murals at our schools have benefited greatly. We thank you so much and we thank you for watching Crossroads and Learning. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Aloha, mahalo.