PITTSFIELD — When passengers step off the Berkshire Flyer in Pittsfield, they will now be greeted by a collage of color that celebrates all forms of transit.
A new mural spans the length of the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority Intermodal Center’s platform, paying homage to rail, bus, automobile, foot and migration travel.
Shelsy Rodriguez, 22, painted the mural through Pittsfield’s Let It Shine! Public Art Partnership, a group that organizes public art and revitalization projects on North Street. Other projects commissioned by the partnership include “Sisterhood,” a mural painted on the south-facing side of the Shipton Building by Silvia Lopez Chavez, and a 50 foot mural on Carr Hardware designed by qwynto.
The projects are funded through MassDevelopment’s Transformative Development Initiative, a program designed to accelerate economic growth in Gateway Cities.
Rodriguez grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, where she lived until joining her mother in Pittsfield three years ago. She now studies environmental science part-time at Berkshire Community College and pursues painting and photography with Katunemo, a collective that approaches art as a form of healing and community building.
It was in Colombia, during the pandemic, that Rodriguez began to paint.
“I felt the pandemic was key to bringing out my artistic side. That time was shocking for everybody,” Rodriguez said. “So [art] was an escape for me, it was healing.”
Art has since become a bridge in Rodriguez’s life. Her paintings span her love for the environment and her artistic passions. And they tie her first home, and the culture of her ancestors, to where she lives now.
“We need to connect with the present, so we need to connect with nature,” Rodriguez said. “But we also need to connect with our roots and think about caring for the future.”
It’s a sentiment captured in a line Rodriguez painted into a corner of the mural — “the best culture is your roots.”
The phrase is translated from Quechua, a language spoken by many Indigenous communities throughout the Andes.
On the right side of the mural, Rodriguez painted a chickadee perched on a Mayflower stalk. Both are symbols of Massachusetts, she said.
On the left, Rodriguez painted a group of pedestrians in the colors of six Latin American flags: Argentina, México, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.
Above the figures’ heads flutters a monarch butterfly.
Every fall, monarch butterflies begin their historic migration south. They winter in the mountains of Mexico, roosting in oyamel fir forests, before traveling back north come spring.
This journey, undertaken in search of a safe environment, has become a symbol of immigration for many, including Rodriguez.
“The monarch butterfly seeks a place to improve its life just as people in my community, immigrant people, do,” Rodriguez said.
The mural is Rodriguez’s first large scale painting. Her other work — which has been displayed in exhibitions across the Berkshires and Massachusetts, including at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke — tends to be smaller paintings. They too are painted in a collage style, and share the stories of home in Colombia.
“I paint about the environment and about my culture and I like to honor my roots,” Rodriguez said.