ASHLAND – Army veteran Rafael Serrano’s vibrant street art has adorned downtown Ashland for a few years now, often catching the attention of diners and shoppers as they explore Main Street.
Serrano’s hobby originally began with creating temporary works of art activated by rainfall, called “rainworks,” but he shifted to using paint a couple of years ago. His recent works have been inspired by social issues he cares deeply about.
This latest art exhibit is displayed in a new venue, though, on canvases hanging indoors on the walls of The Grooming Lounge. They went up last week and will be there for viewing until the end of March.
“If you happen to be downtown, stop by and take a picture in front of it,” Serrano said, inviting visitors to peek in and see his work. He notes the business owner, Acacia Leasure, was excited to showcase the art and welcomes visitors interested in viewing it.
The paintings feature five healthcare workers, all of whom Serrano knows personally. They are all masked, with their eyes alone conveying their different emotions. It is a tribute to the heroic efforts of those working in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among the subjects depicted is Serrano’s girlfriend, Jessica Hartshorn, who has spent the last 13 years working as a registered nurse for OhioHealth. She recently took a new position at OhioHealth’s Ashland Health Center, which opened in Jan.
Hartshorn shared what this tribute means to her personally, as someone who has worked in healthcare for a long time and faced this past year’s challenges head-on.
“To me, it’s a great way to honor healthcare workers. To actually use their likeness, to be able to capture the faces and the emotions that a lot of us are feeling and have been going through,” Hartshorn said. “In those pictures, I see everything from worry and weariness to hope and resolve.”
“We’ve been through so many changes this year as our awareness evolves and grows and we learn more about the virus. But we’ve also really come together as a community. There’s a bonding that you go through when you experience something like this together. Your only choice is to move forward and to keep going—to be strong. We do that together and through community.”
The other subjects in the display are four women named Jill White, Shannon O’Connell, Kelli Eater and Melanie Kline.
Serrano says he did not consciously plan to only depict women in this tribute. When he sent out messages asking for healthcare workers as models, these subjects were the ones who responded.
“A disproportionate number of healthcare workers are women, and this is something that is affecting women disproportionately,” Serrano said.
According to data collected by the United States Census Bureau, women made up 76 percent of the healthcare force in the United States as of 2019.
When it comes to his process for creating these pieces, Serrano shared that it was very spontaneous. He snapped a photo of Hartshorn one Sunday morning and used it as inspiration to paint a mural downtown. The idea for the bigger project, using more models, came later.
“I’m very spur of the moment, and sometimes that’s when you can really capture magic,” Serrano said. “I didn’t really have any grandiose ideas behind it. I just thought it would be nice.”
