Kindred Spirits
A new mural painted by a renowned Angeleno artist, and the community-centered process to create it, both inspires and connects the Trojan Family.
By Michelle McCarthy
View/download this article in the USC Chan Magazine as a PDF document (2.92MB).
In the heart of the USC Chan Division’s main hallway at the Center for the Health Professions building, acrylic sunlight splashes across a 9-by-18-foot expanse that’s alive with form, movement and meaning. Thousands of brushstrokes are a chorus of color and care, transforming a once-gray hallway into a living record of community.
“Kindred Spirits,” a mural completed in late 2024 by artist Paul Botello, has become far more than paint on drywall. For students, faculty and staff, it stands as a living testament to identity, collaboration and belonging — a visual embodiment of who the USC Chan Division is, and what it strives to be.
Botello, who has spent decades painting large-scale murals across Southern California, came to the project through a prior university collaboration.
“I’d worked with USC before on a COVID-awareness campaign,” he says. “They liked what I did and reached out again. It turned out to be a really great opportunity.”
Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Botello has been immersed in the Chicano muralist tradition for practically his entire life. As a UCLA-trained artist influenced by Mexican masters like Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, he has long viewed murals as more than aesthetic decoration. For him, they are a way to reclaim space, share stories and build identity. His works across Los Angeles chronicle community histories by blending realism with symbolism, and local imagery with universal themes.
But Kindred Spirits would be something new for Botello — not just his first collaboration with the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, but also a rare indoor commission.
“I usually paint outdoors,” he explains. “Outside, you have to worry about sun damage and fading. Indoors, I could focus on details, layering color and expression in ways that feel more like painting a canvas than a wall.”
Creation Through Co-Occupation
(Photo by Anna Glenn)
Collaboration and connection were central to the mural’s commissioning, says Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek.
“Our community was deeply affected by the pandemic and other societal events polarizing communities around the globe,” Baranek says. “I could tell that we needed to engage in a community-driven occupation that could bring us unity, hope and a sense of purpose.”
Occupational science uses the term “co-occupation” to encapsulate the powerful, health-promoting effects of engaging in a meaningful activity with other people, side-by-side in not only the literal, but also the metaphorical, sense.
“We often talk about how occupational science and occupational therapy, at their core, embrace the power of human occupations to heal and to restore,” Baranek says. “We needed something beautiful that would tell our own cultural story from multiple viewpoints, while also putting our own ideas to the test — something that reflects USC Chan’s incredible legacy, the hopes and dreams of our current community, and a bridge to a brighter future.”
So before he made the first brushstroke, Botello did something that artists seldom do. He listened.
From the outset, the creative process reflected the participatory ethos of occupational therapy — collaborative, inclusive and deeply human-centered. With Baranek’s encouragement, Botello held multiple brainstorming and listening sessions with students, faculty and staff to better understand what mattered most to the division.
“We met at Lincoln Park,” he recalls.
Lincoln Park is located literally across the street from the Center for the Health Professions, and includes Plaza de la Raza, a community arts and education space.
“About a hundred people — teachers, staff, administrators — showed up. I gave a presentation with slides of my past work, and then asked everyone to respond. I handed out paper and pencils and said, ‘Show me what this place means to you.’”
The responses poured in, and included sketches, words, poems and personal reflections. Back at home, Botello and his wife spread the papers across their dining table to look for patterns. Common themes included community, empowerment, diversity, healing and family. Those ideas formed the backbone of his first drafts. When he presented initial sketches, he was surprised by the amount of engagement that followed.
“We had three focus groups with students, faculty and a big group over Zoom,” he says.
“They gave feedback on everything. I changed quite a few things because some imagery looked too much like physical therapy. I really learned what occupational therapy was.”
An Eye for Detail
(Photo by Sarah Bream)
Every brushstroke in Kindred Spirits carries significance extracted from those community conversations. At the mural’s right, a radiant elder woman rises, her hair blending into leaves and sky.
“She represents all the deans who have led the division,” Botello explains. “She’s part human, part nature, a woman of color composed of hundreds of brushstrokes in different tones. She’s wise, intellectual, nurturing; a scholar who embodies continuity.”
To the viewer’s left, a ballerina with a prosthetic leg strikes fourth position pose with strength and grace. Originally painted in soft pinks, the dancer transformed thanks to student feedback.
“They said, ‘Mr. Botello, what about USC colors?’” he says with a laugh. “Then someone told me about Misty Copeland, the first Black principal ballerina at the American Ballet Theatre. That inspired me to reimagine her as a strong Black woman wearing cardinal and gold.”
Nearby, a family of two fathers and their daughter picnics on a blanket.
“That idea came from a student who said the mural should reflect same-sex families,” Botello says. “I thought that was beautiful. I wanted it to feel like home for everyone.”
For Onedit Lara-Rico OTD ’26, now a third-year occupational therapy doctoral student, the mural, more than anything, was a chance to be heard.
“We [students] were invited from the very beginning,” she says. “They told us, ‘This is your space. Help us shape it.’”
As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, Lara-Rico has often felt invisible in academic settings. But participating in the making of Kindred Spirits felt different.
“I’ve had a lot of obstacles pursuing higher education,” she says. “Seeing my input reflected on the wall was powerful. It told me that my story, and others like mine, belonged here.”
She even painted a small section herself.
“It was just a patch of color,” she says, smiling, “but I’ll never forget it. That’s my brushstroke.”
Each day, walking by the mural reminds her of the inclusive community she has helped build with her own hands.
“In that hallway, most portraits are of white women,” she says. “Seeing people of color, seeing diversity, it gives me a sense of belonging. It tells me this space includes me.”
(Photo by Grace Baranek)
Enhancing that sense of belongingness is an everyday objective of Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy Jesús Díaz MA ’08, OTD ’09. In his role as associate chair of community, culture, and belonging, Díaz leads initiatives, events, dialogues and creative activities to strengthen cohesion among the nearly 800 members of the USC Chan community. Díaz and Sarah Bream MA ’96, OTD ’09, associate chair of operations, community partnerships and development, were instrumental in bringing the project to life.
Díaz says that the mural’s creation mirrors the ways in which occupational therapists leverage meaningful activities for the good of others.
“Occupational therapy is about collaboration and creativity,” he says. “We design interventions with people, not for them. The mural process was the same: collective, participatory and healing.”
As students, staff and faculty contributed their sketches and stories, they weren’t just designing a mural. They were co-creating a shared identity.
“It became a community effort,” Díaz says. “Everyone could look at the finished piece and say, ‘I see myself there.’”
Reflections of Community
Faculty member Samia Rafeedie with Botello (photo by Sarah Bream)
As with all great art, beneath its surface lie complex meanings merging personal and collective histories, using symbolism both subtle and overt.
“It has to catch your eye first,” Botello says. “That’s the hook. But once you stop to look closer, it should make you think.”
Beside the ballerina are seemingly transparent figures representing occupational therapists who play essential, yet too-often underappreciated, roles. As Botello sees it, rehabilitation and recovery depend on connection, especially when family cannot be present and providers like occupational therapists step in with compassion, patience and strength. That said, Botello isn’t self-serious.
“I like to hide little Easter eggs, details that reward people who spend time [viewing] it,” Botello says.
For example, a tree trunk is carved with a small heart and the initials P + R for Paul and his wife, Renee.
Botello is also detail-oriented, so much so, that he even had USC Facilities staff adjust the temperature of the hallway lighting so that the mural’s colors and tones would appear as he intended.
Admirers line up for an artist meet-and-greet during the December 2024 unveiling ceremony of Kindred Spirits (photo by Anna Glenn)
No matter how big or small, every motif in Kindred Spirits connotes community. That includes a few visual references, like Pre-Colombian sun iconography, to the East Los Angeles community that surrounds USC’s Health Sciences Campus. More than 95 percent of people in East LA identify as Hispanic/Latino, the highest concentration of any city in the continental United States.
“Sometimes we get isolated inside our building,” Díaz says. “This mural brings a little of that outside world in. It reminds us to stay rooted in the communities we serve.”
As painting progressed, it also became clear that Botello’s humility and openness were essential to the mural’s success.
“I’m an expert in my field,” he says, “but I always go into each space ready to learn. Every project teaches me something new.”
Botello says he learned much from the faculty who lingered between classes, and the students who dropped by to chat. For many, checking in on its progress became something of a weekly, or even daily, communal ritual, a chance to exchange stories, laughter and mutual admiration.
“It was a loving, caring environment,” Botello says. “Sometimes I’d spend an hour just talking with people before painting.”
Lara-Rico says that approach was truly transformative.
“[Botello] never acted like it was his mural. It became our mural.”
A year after its final touches, Kindred Spirits continues to inspire all who pass by, still sparking storytelling, laughs and admiration. It’s not only a visual centerpiece but also a teaching tool for the next generation of OT students, a tangible reminder of the ways in which collaboration, empathy and creativity are essential to healing and learning.
“When future students walk by, I want them to feel welcome and safe,” Lara-Rico says. “To know that their voices matter here.”
Botello shares that same hope.
“I want people to feel joy and pride, and to see something new every time because every time they bring a new story to it,” he says.
In so many ways, Kindred Spirits does just what occupational therapy practitioners do best: turn doing into belonging, art into connection and a building into a home.
(Photo by Ling Luo)
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