Light reflected off a splatter of bright yellow paint on Brooklyn Williams’ face as she rested her hand atop a three-step ladder.
The 18-year-old glanced down, dipped a brush into a cup of white paint and scraped off the excess. In one smooth sweep of the brush, the saturated bristles deposited the paint on the wall.
Each stroke brought Brooklyn closer to Fort Worth — a place where she grew up but to which she never felt connected. The senior at I.M. Terrell Academy inched back and admired her work. She’d completed only the base layer, but it would soon evolve into a picket fence in a mural painted on the Lowden Street bridge in south Fort Worth.
“This really helps with that,” Brooklyn said of that sense of belonging.
The mural is connecting Brooklyn and more than 20 other Terrell students to their hometown. At the same time, the city of Fort Worth is using the mural to bring together a community through the power of public art.
I.M. Terrell Academy students Bridget Musenda and Sa Nefer Ra paint a mural in the Ryan Place neighborhood on Oct. 30, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Students fanned out beneath the bridge.
On one end, a student pressed her fingers onto a wall and smudged a line of light blue chalk. She picked up another slightly worn stick of chalk and twirled it near the intentionally blurred line.
On the other end, a trio of students applied dark blue paint over a wall of dried yellow paint. White outlines of stars, a hand with the palm facing out and flowers all appeared to pop out of the blue background.
I.M. Terrell Academy students Nataley Perez and Judith Aguilar use chalk to sketch out the outlines of a mural in the Ryan Place neighborhood on Oct. 30, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Shahrzad Abbasi, an art teacher at Terrell Academy, and Margo Gordon, program coordinator of the city’s graffiti abatement program, stood off to the side and watched. The pair worked together to provide students this opportunity to apply their creativity in the community through the city’s Palette Program.
In preparation, students sketched out several mural options, and residents of the surrounding neighborhood voted on the final design.
“It contains a lot of special parts from the community, like their hands. You’ll see that there are flowers to represent Bluebonnet Hills,” Abbasi said. “The students did a lot of really good research into the community.”
Bridget Musenda paints hands on a mural in the Ryan Place neighborhood on Oct. 30, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Serenity Johnson, 17, dunked her brush into a cup of brown paint held in her left hand. She scrunched her face as she concentrated on placing the paint in just the right spot.
Serenity pointed at the hands she painted and explained they represent residents and the hard work they do day in and day out.
Art means everything to the high school senior, she said. Each piece has so many interpretations, all united by beauty.
“I love it because of how I can express my own person through it,” she said, looking up at the wall she was painting. “Having this up here is like me connecting myself with the community here.”
The mural is about representing the community’s pride, Gordon said. It replaces an older painting that began showing its age. Both shared the same goal: beautifying the area and deterring graffiti.
I.M. Terrell students and teachers paint a mural in the Ryan Place neighborhood on Oct. 30, 2025. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
“The community’s looking out for it. They’re looking out for this area. They’re making sure that it’s a beautification program that stays clean,” Gordon said.
When the mural was finished earlier in November, the bridge no longer looked the same. A patchwork of hands, flowers and more reflected the neighborhood’s residents.
For Brooklyn, it wasn’t just paint on a wall. It was her lasting mark on Fort Worth.
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
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