Elise Delgado, a Conestoga High School graduate and student at Carnegie Mellon University, paints a picture of hope and empathy in her latest mural, writes Heidi Opdyke for CMU News.

Delgado did not feel like she fit into the community when she joined CMU.

“I felt very alienated,” she said. “I have a Puerto Rican background, so I often have been the only Brown person in the room in a lot of my classes.”

After participating in several programs that focused on diversity and inclusion, she concentrated on amplifying other people’s voices in her paintings.

Her latest work spans a trio of three-foot-by-six-foot panels full of symbolic imagery. The flowers represent different groups, such as a rose in the colors of The BIPOC Project and LGBTQ+ flag.

She then incorporated the anonymous words from more than 70 on-campus interviews — each from an underrepresented group — into a path. Delgado used their face masks to provide texture.

The university’s Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion supported the mural. It is now seeking a campus site to display it.

Read more about Elise Delgado at CMU News.