VERMILLION, S.D. (MITCHELLNOW) More art is popping up in midwestern towns and cities in the form of murals – and one South Dakota-based artist team is involving local residents. When Vermillion-based artists Reyna Hernandez and Amber Hansen are tapped to make a project, they don’t show up with a design – or even an idea. Their new collaboration, Mural On The Wall, or “Mural O-T-W,” instead asks locals to generate ideas about their communities, through storytelling, poetry and drawing. A project on Vermillion’s Main Street came to life when the high school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance group got funding from the “It Gets Better Project,” which works to empower L-G-B-T-Q youth around the world. Hernandez says the group’s ideas centered on identity.

    “I think a lot of it was rooted around visibility, and broadening visibility of LGBTQ youth. Conversations about belonging, feelings of not belonging. Identity was a really big topic.”

In this case, the result is a colorful, two-story mural featuring horses with unicorn shadows and a rainbow star quilt – designed by Hernandez’s mother – on a video game-style background. The mural was completed with a community celebration last September.

Hernandez and Hansen started Mural O-T-W in 2023, but they’ve been making murals together for about five years in South Dakota. They’ve worked on projects in Centerville, Wagner and several more in Vermillion, as well as in Kansas and Iowa. Hansen says it’s empowering for locals to have a voice in the process.