Dappled Light
Painting by Cesar Rodrigues
Design by Jessica Finch

Jessica Finch is a Principal at Selbert Perkins Design where she oversees wayfinding, placemaking, and branded environment projects. She has over 18 years’ experience working on multi-faceted projects in collaboration with architects and owners. She is passionate about forging unlikely partnerships and developing concepts that engage communities. In her previous role in Boston Children’s Hospital's office of Planning and Design, she established public art programs and museum partnerships, led greenspace and donor recognition efforts, and developed themes and multi-site placemaking strategies in collaboration with architects, project managers, hospital staff and families.

Her specialties include: placemaking, community engagement, environmental graphics, sculpture, interactive art, art planning, and business development.

Cesar Rodrigues is an abstract painter who is on a lifelong mission to inspire and empower people through the power of visual storytelling. Throughout the course of his artistic career, his work has been showcased at the Artsworcester Gallery and sold at the Davis Gallery.Born in Brockton, Cesar was diagnosed with SMA type 2 and given only a few years to live. While it is a progressive disease and a dire diagnosis, he never gave up hope. During most of his childhood, he was in and out of hospitals dealing with pneumonia and surgeries. However, it is in that sterile setting that his passion for art was born. What served as his inspiration were all the vibrant drawings hanging on the walls, and he would spend hours attempting to draw them in a similar style. It wasn’t long before the nurses took notice and encouraged his seemingly divine spark of inspiration by bringing him boxes of crayons and colored pencils at his bedside. Drawing soon took over his mind and all the needles and medications didn’t seem to faze him anymore.

Initially, Cesar was a realism painter, with an affinity for painting people, landscapes, and animals. The older he got, the stronger his mind became; however, his drawing hand became weaker. By the age of 18, that weakness was more evident, and his hand eventually got so weak, he could no longer adequately draw with it. Fortunately, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Right before graduating high school, his art teacher restored his hope by sharing some abstract art with him that a former student created. But what really restored it is the time when his teacher found a big blue canvas in the trash and painted his first abstract painting with him, which became a textbook case of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The spark for the abstract was there, but it wasn’t until losing the strength in his right hand entirely, that he truly took a more abstract path with his artwork by using his left hand instead. Alas, that hand also got weaker, but he still pushed forward without losing his optimism and he got resourceful and designed a 2d painting system that would assist him in painting. He reached out to Easterseals for some help, and they funded and built his very own painting system.