Associate Professor of Studio Art Luca Molnar, MFA, is one of 18 artists invited to participate in “Art Pollination: Building Food Justice through Creativity,” a project to raise awareness and promote solutions to the challenge of food insecurity and hunger in Central Florida.

Molnar’s mural, which is displayed on a 7-by-38-foot wall at the Mennello Museum of American Art, located at 900 E. Princeton St., Orlando, in Loch Haven Cultural Park, was unveiled on Oct. 10.

“Hexagons are a running theme throughout this project because of the connection to pollinators and bees,” said Molnar, who took a sabbatical during the 2025 fall semester to paint the mural and collaborate on a prose and mixed media book, The Mother Game, with a friend in Sao Paulo. “I’ve used a lot of patterns in my work ever since graduate school. There also are elements of a quilting pattern in this mural, which reference farm labor in Florida and how it looked, historically, as well as in a contemporary context.”

Armed with ladders, brushes and four gallons of paint, Molnar was assisted by Natalie Thomas ’24. “She was my research assistant before she graduated and helped me install two earlier shows,” Molnar explained.

In addition, Sarah Cramer, PhD, assistant professor of Sustainable Food Systems at Stetson, reviewed early drafts of the mural design. “She gave me really important feedback,” Molnar said.

The project was funded through a $1 million grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge, which brings together mayors, residents, and artists to develop innovative, temporary public art projects that address important civic issues in their communities. The City of Orlando’s proposal was one of just eight selected out of more than 150 submissions from around the country.

Over a two-year period, artists from Central Florida will debut new works for display along the Orlando Urban Trail, at community centers, on high-visibility billboards, in exhibitions at the Downtown Arts District’s CityArts venue and at the City Hall Terrace Gallery in Downtown Orlando.

The art installations are designed to bring attention to the work that nonprofit partners Black Bee Honey, 4Roots, Hebni Nutrition Consultants and IDEAS for Us are doing to help solve hunger-related challenges in Orlando. Others include Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences in Orange County.

About one in seven people in Central Florida are food insecure, which means they don’t have reliable access to healthy food. This includes more than 500,000 people who don’t know where their next meal will come from. That includes 153,460 children, or one in six, according to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

Molnar also met with Jeannie Economos of the Farmworkers Association of Florida, to learn more about Geraldean Matthew, a former farmworker who is featured in the mural.

“Geraldean was a farmworker in Apopka who was exposed to pesticides that caused serious consequences,” Molnar said. “She passed away in her sixties due to chronic illnesses caused by that exposure. Stetson has a long-standing collaboration with the Farmworkers Association of Florida.”

Molnar’s mural coincided with an opening reception for lead artist Juan Williams Chávez’s own work at the Mennello Museum of American Art: Juan William Chávez: Art Pollination, which features drawings, embroidery, zines, artifacts and ephemera that mine creativity through the pollination (he’s a beekeeper) of art and ideas. The exhibition will run until Jan. 25, 2026.

 “In Orlando, we prioritize arts and culture because of the unique way it unites us and defines us,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. “That’s why we’re so excited to be selected for this grant opportunity and utilize art to shed light on a local issue and help create and inspire change.”

According to artist Juan William Chávez, “public art can be a powerful tool to illuminate these often hard-to-see issues.”

Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, visit mennellomuseum.org or call 407-246-4278.