It’s a bizarre niche of the art world that Roberto Marquez occupies: As a self-styled disaster artist he paints murals at the scene of tragic events. This piece does not dig too deeply into what inspires Marguez, but it does show the importance of a central place for grief after a tragedy.
Instead of a finished mural, at the Wednesday night vigil Marquez offered up his incomplete panels to the mourners, inviting them to take paintbrushes and add their own messages of grief or love. “He really gave them a place to express their feelings,” Jackson says. “Nobody else thought about it or even tried to do it.”
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