Valerie Rose
Mural Location: 1630 Pearl St. Boulder, CO 80302 (Alley behind Patagonia)
This mural is activated in Augmented Reality! Download and open the Artivive app and capture the entire mural on your device’s camera to access the digital layer in person or on your computer screen.
Northern California-based artist Valerie Rose is on a mission to make American Sign Language more accessible and widely used.
As a half-Deaf CODA (child of deaf adults), she aims to honor the beauty of her language and Deaf culture with her mural for Street Wise 2022. She hopes that her work can either inspire others to start conversations about or learn ASL. Learning sign language brings people together and creates a more inclusive environment. Valerie wants everyone, especially hearing people, to learn sign language to make the world more accessible. And as her mural illustrates, ASL is also fun, healing, and empowering!
Using pale pinks, blues, greens, and oranges, Valerie painted a portrait of her ASL student Lola wearing a turtleneck t-shirt, small hoop earrings, and a pixie haircut. Lola lifts her arms up and rests her hands behind her head, creating the sign for “overwhelmed.” A few flowers frame the figure along with the text “Sign Language is for Everyone.”
Valerie took the mural to the next level using Artivive to create an Augmented Reality layer that reveals Lola and additional characters signing in ASL. Each character is based on someone the artist knows and loves. They each chose the sign that they felt connected to and that reflects their personality. They’re beautiful, funny, and relatable. The characters pop up in AR signing “abundance,” “mind blown,” and “ew.” As the figures change, so does the phrase “Sign Language is for Everyone,” transforming into “Sign Language is Fun” and then “Sign Language is Important.”
This mural is the first time that Valerie has used AR, allowing viewers to learn how to sign the illustrated signs. The artist digitally sketched each figure and created the final images and animations on her iPad before painting this mural. After completing the mural, she uploaded her image of Lola and the animations for each character into Artivive to create the AR layer.
In addition to her art practice, Valerie teaches accessible and affordable ASL classes in her community. She is the project coordinator for @signsignproject, a public art project that honors the beauty of ASL and Deaf culture and highlights disability rights and the need for accessibility.
About the Artist: