Two murals in progress by Salinas-based arts organization Hijos Del Sol.

Two murals are in the works by Hijos Del Sol (Children of the Sun) Arts Productions in Salinas, at the Goodwill thrift store, 708 East Alisal St., and at Ensen Community Park.

Hijos Del Sol is a Salinas-based nonprofit arts organization started in 1994 with the mission to create a space for children to tap into their creative minds.

The Goodwill mural, which honors farmworkers, was funded by the Arts Council for Monterey County three years ago.

“It took us forever to find a wall. We found a wall in Midtown Lane a year and a half ago, but then we decided to move it to a place that truly honors farmworkers,” says Christian Mendelsohn, executive director of Hijos Del Sol. “At that Goodwill is where a lot of people get picked up and dropped off on some of the buses to go to work in the fields, so that's one of the reasons why José Ortiz and the team thought it would be more appropriate over there than in the alleyway in Midtown Lane.”

José Ortiz, the founding director of Hijos Del Sol, says the mural showcases a mother and father portrayed as giants holding and hugging their children while a sun reflects on the top right corner and the fields showcase at the bottom.

Most of the mural, which is 17 feet by 15 feet tall, includes blue, green, yellow and gray colors, all made by Prismacolor pencils, a wax-based colored pencil. Ortiz has the help of three other illustrators who are part of Hijos Del Sol to complete the mural.

“We want people to see the great work of these farmworkers, who are professionals, and how valuable their work is,” Ortiz says.

The time of completion for the mural at Goodwill is set to be around the first two weeks of July.

Hijos Del Sol was officially selected to design and lead the community-involved mural at Ensen Community Park funded by the Big Sur Land Trust with a budget of $35,000.

The mural, which is 260 feet by 5 feet tall, all made of acrylic paint, is a display of the Ensen tribe and features all types of animals including a wolf, a coyote, a frog, an eagle and a hummingbird.

“The mural is about the story of the animals that come back every year because of the lake and about the human interconnectedness with nature,” Ortiz says. “We also show the human hands to preserve the ecosystem.”

Ortiz is referring to a swamp or bodies of water that form year-round at the park and dry up in the summer.

“It’s a community-based project and we want to get the community to help paint the mural,” Mendelsohn adds.

There are six community painting days where the public can participate in the mural. The first was already held on Saturday, June 13 with the following community painting days being June 20, 24 and 27 and July 11 and 18.