Tucked behind With Love Market & Café, on the corner of Vermont Street and W. 20th Street is a vibrant mural combining Salvadoran folk art with fruits and vegetables, painted and designed by USC students. The mural was painted over the course of one week in December, finalizing the collaboration between the local cafe and the student group SeeSaw Murals.

“I never thought I could do something like this, ever, because I’m horrible at painting,” said Sheena Kim, one of the project leads. “During the painting process, I teared up multiple times because there were kids and families walking past us painting and … thanking us for beautifying their space.”

Kim, a junior majoring in public relations and advertising, along with Yeji Seo, a senior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation, founded SeeSaw Murals last year through Spark SC, an entrepreneurial club which aims to “empower students to turn their interests into ventures” according to its website.

Seo said she got the idea for SeeSaw from her experience painting murals in high school, where she saw how murals connected artists to their community. She said she was motivated to bring her experience to USC when she noticed a lack of student connection to the surrounding community.

SeeSaw, Seo said, partners with local businesses to create free murals painted and designed by USC artists. She said she hopes her and Kim’s initiative will encourage USC students to branch out and engage outside of campus.

“USC students should do more in general to connect with the local community,” Seo said. “We don’t actually like to talk to the people around us, or the businesses around us.”

Seo and Kim began cold calling local businesses last spring, asking if they would be interested in a free mural. That’s when they found With Love Market and Cafe, a local business less than a mile away from campus focused on increasing access to healthy food in South Central Los Angeles. Seo said the cafe got back to her quickly, expressing interest in the collaboration.

The pair reached out to other businesses in Downtown L.A., but Kim said the other businesses that got back to them were higher end and not as community focused as With Love. Kim said they felt With Love would allow them to make the impact in the community that they were hoping for.

“We found it … very fruitful, how there were four middle schools around that area that we had no idea [about],” Kim said. “We were working on this mural for the business, but at one point for me, at least, I would paint thinking, ‘Oh, kids see this as well.’”

Andrew McDowell, the founder of With Love, said he took time to ensure the collaboration would benefit both the cafe, and the students.

“We wanted to do something where the students had freedom to create, but at the same time, really sat well in the pocket of our neighborhood,” McDowell said. “We went back and forth a few times, and they just did a really good job incorporating imagery and style to match more Salvadorian cultural heritage.”

Seo said SeeSaw created a mural representing the community With Love serves, which is predominantly Salvadoran, by combining Salvadoran folk art with images of local produce that the cafe sells.

With Love worked with USC student groups in the past, McDowell said, but the majority have graduated. He said he hopes to get younger students into the cafe to foster a connection between them and local businesses.

“We really try to do our best to bring everyone together so there can be an intergenerational and cross cultural experience available to everyone at any point,” McDowell said. “If folks are looking for that, this is a really soft on-ramp to plugging into the local community.”

Seo said she aims for SeeSaw to continue on after she graduates and hopes a new project will be created in the next year. Seo also said she hopes that this mural will help begin bridging students to the businesses just outside campus.

Apart from the positive impact Kim and Seo said the mural made in the community outside USC, they also said they were happy that the project connected students to each other.

“The most fulfilling part from this too, is just seeing the diverse USC community come together,” Kim said. “All the artists, they were all strangers, none of them knew each other, basically until we gathered them all, and somehow, with so many different backgrounds and so many levels of artistry, we executed it really well.”