The town of Paradise has suffered a camp fire, which lasted 17 days and caused a damage of $16. 5 billion. As a result, the beautifully named place lost its beauty.
Shane Grammer, a creative director for Disney's theme parks in Los Angeles, paid close attention to the news of the fire. He felt quite helpless when seeing the pictures shared by his childhood friend Shane Edwards in the town, in which Shane photographed his white chimney, the only part of his house left after the fire.
"I've got to paint that chimney," he said to Inside Edition. "I'm not trying to say anything. And it was an opportunity for me to express and be an artist, isn't it?"
Grammer spent three hours spray-painting the image of a woman on the chimney, which is strikingly mysterious black and white, in the ruins. Perhaps it serves as a reminder of the beauty of life or just life itself. Then Grammer put the picture on Instagram. On seeing it, the victims of the fire could not contain themselves." Beautiful and haunting," one of them commented. And another said," You bring beauty and hope."
At this time, Grammer became aware that something deeper had been transformed by a purely artistic expression. "When the first mural (壁画) moved so many people, I knew I had to come back up," he said to KRCR-TV. Grammer returned to Paradise eight times in three months, during which he completed 17 paintings of victims and Biblical figures, pickups and parts of buildings on walls.
Today, Grammer's efforts have developed into a movement. He has also painted murals in dark places that seriously need some light around the world.
Ironically, the first painting, on the chimney in Paradise, existed for just several months, since the bulldozer (推土机) is a merciless art critic. But Grammer couldn't be more pleased about it, which means the spirit of Paradise is rising again.
