Drive up North MLK Jr. Boulevard past Waco Family Medicine's clinic and you might think somebody ran out of paint.
On one end of the wall, fruit and flowers sit in plain black outline on white — an apple, a strawberry, a bunch of grapes, a whole citrus wheel — with no color in them at all. On the other end, everything is blazing: a woman's face, eyes closed, serene, her hair streaming across the building in ribbons of teal and gold, and that same fruit tumbling through it in full color.
Nobody ran out of paint. The wall was finished in 2019 and it looks exactly the way it is meant to look. The change from line to color is the mural.
Fruit with no color of its own
This is The Color of Health, painted for Waco Family Medicine's MLK Jr. Community Clinic at 1911 N. M.L.K. Jr. Boulevard, and the idea came straight from the people who made it.
The fruit stands for everything we take in — what we eat, what we experience, everything that shapes our health, alone and together. And it has no color of its own. It only takes on color, vibrancy and energy through the people. Every human is a work in progress; what we take in is what colors us. Which turns the usual health-poster message neatly on its head: the fruit isn't what makes the people beautiful. The people are what make the fruit come alive. It's people that are the true fruit of this community.
The second face
Here's the part most people miss. Look again at the gold beside her. There's a second face there — a man's — drawn so quietly into the yellows that most drivers go right past without ever seeing him.
He's meant to be that subtle, and he's meant to be there. Maybe they're a couple; maybe they're patient and carer. Either way, the point is the pair: the layered, relational nature of community, the history of this neighborhood, and the partnership at the heart of the word family in Waco Family Medicine, who commissioned the wall. The nourishment moves through both of them, and the color of health flows out from them.
Painted by Waco's own apprentices
The design grew out of listening. Before they painted a stroke, the crew heard East Waco's community leaders talk about the strong neighborhoods around the clinic — and about the women who rose up, generation after generation, as midwives, nurses and healers to care for this side of town. Their life's work was the wellness of their neighbors. That's the woman on the wall.
The crew was Creative Waco's ARTprenticeship: young creatives from Waco ISD high schools, paid for an eight-week, concept-to-completion job under working artists. Will Suarez was lead designer, with artist mentors Susan Sistrunk, Bethany Franzen and Julie Milstead. The ARTprentices were Julius Merriwether, Magnolia Oliphant, Maria Quinones-Prado, Kaeleana Ramirez, Daphne Rodriguez and Danielle Stevens. Creative Waco tells the full design story at creativewaco.org.
We'll own one thing here: an earlier version of our own stop page described this wall as unfinished. It never was. Our thanks to Creative Waco for setting the record straight — and honestly, it's the best possible proof the design works. It fooled us, right up until it explained itself.
Go see it
The Color of Health is a worth-the-drive stop on our Waco's Walls trail, and it shares the clinic with a companion wall, The Spirit of We. If Will Suarez's name keeps turning up for you, it should — meet him and the rest of the crew in Who Paints Waco?
Then open the Waco's Walls trail or The Whole Map and go find the next one. It's all free — and every wall in this town has a story worth stopping for.