Eight years ago, Renee Kargleder came to Tucson from her hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, looking for a fresh start.
She didn’t know much about Tucson, having chosen her location by blindly dropping her finger onto a map, but she had a good feeling about the city when she arrived. Kargleder, a sexual assault survivor, knew only that she needed to start over away from the place where her attack occurred, and Tucson would do the trick.
On Friday, standing in front of a bright purple wall of a seamstress shop at West Congress Street and South Grande Avenue, it’s as if her true purpose for landing in Tucson all those years ago was finally realized.
Founder of local nonprofit the Resilience Project, Kargleder, 29, has advanced the project from a scholarship project she started as a college student in 2017, to public art installations meant to elevate the voices of other survivors while also promoting healing.
Kargleder and artist Kurt Schlaefer are wrapping up final details for the plaque that Schlaefer is getting ready to install next to the eye-catching mural emblazoned across a wall of the dressmaker shop Connecting Threads.
The “mural of resilience,” as the project refers to it, is Schlaefer’s interpretation of a piece submitted as a scholarship application during the 2017-18 academic year, while Kargleder was finishing her master’s degree at the University of Arizona.
In November, the Resilience Project officially became a nonprofit. The murals of resilience are one of the group’s many initiatives, and this mural is the first of what Kargleder hopes will be many.
Renee Kargleder
The piece, called “The Triumph of the Human Spirit,” was an easy pick for the group’s first mural, Kargleder said Friday.
“We received so much warmth and feelings about this one, we thought this would be excellent for our first mural project,” Kargleder said. “This was the one that most resonated with our board and the community, and it’s just a striking piece.”
Kargleder has taught sixth grade at the Paulo Freire Freedom School since graduating from the UA last spring with her master’s degree in education. For now, her work with the Resilience Project is part time, but she’s hoping to make it a full-time gig eventually.
“There’s lots of potential in terms of art and healing and the impacts that something like this can have on society and our ideas,” Kargleder said.
The scholarship is still very much a part of the project’s core, with the 2019-20 application period having opened at the beginning of the month. It will run through June 3, but this time around, it’s not just for students.
“Survivors sometimes can’t go to college, so we’re opening it up to the community and wanting the community to send in some beautiful pictures of what triumph looks like,” Kargleder said. “Especially now with this global chaos that we’re going through. We want to be a light and we want to be part of the healing that we’ll all need.”
One of the Resilience Project’s goals has always been to empower survivors through art, so Kargleder’s idea of making that art available to the community wasn’t a huge stretch from what the group was already doing.
Once her idea for the murals was born, Kargleder didn’t have to look far to find an artist. She was already friends with Schlaefer, who has owned Signs by Kurt since 1985.
“I do mural work also and (Renee) kind of knew, and she just approached me and showed me the art she had,” Schlaefer said. He told Kargleder he was going to reinterpret the original submission, which was created by overlaying photographs. “I knew I couldn’t literally reproduce it, but I think it captures the spirit.”
The art piece upon which “The Triumph of the Human Spirit,” the Resilience Project’s first mural in Tucson, was based.
Schlaefer said the piece evolved as he started painting and tried to capture the appropriate energy. Kargleder said she cried the first time she saw it. The plaque that will likely go up in the next week will include the poem that came with the submission.
“This kind of a project, because I knew Renee and I knew the importance of the whole project, feels like an opportunity,” Schlaefer said. “There’s certain projects that you can’t help but put your all into because of the dynamics of the situation.”
Survivors who are awarded the scholarship, in addition to $500, also receive a quilt made from all the pieces of submitted artwork. When Kargleder stumbled upon Connecting Threads after several other locations fell through, and learned the owner is also involved in quilting, she knew she’d found the perfect spot for the project’s first mural.
She took a chance and knocked on the door, and “the stars lined up” as owner Vicky Lofgren offered up her wall.
“It’s kind of cool how everything came together,” Kargleder said. “I think the universe wanted me to knock on the door and see if they’d let me paint on their wall.”
Schlaefer said that as he worked on the mural over the last few weeks, the owners of the pizza restaurant next door, Los Olivos, and other neighbors would periodically stop by to check on his progress.
Kurt Schlaefer
“It was really well-received in the neighborhood. So many positive vibes,” Schlaefer said. “Everything was meant to be.”
In addition to the scholarship and murals, the Resilience Project is working to promote transparency in survivor care, and has launched an app with the “road map to sexual healing,” that Kargleder created with another student while attending the UA. The road map guides survivors through the process based on their specific needs, whether it be reporting the incident to authorities or simply seeking support services.
“This is just the beginning,” Kargleder said of the Resilience Project’s efforts. “Like the little drop of water that turns into a rainstorm, it’s just going to get bigger.”