Chanel Miller’s 75-foot healing mural is what we all need during (and after) the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Miller grew up in Palo Alto and regularly visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as a child. This piece is her first commissioned work for a museum exhibition and is fittingly in a place she considers home. 

I was, I am, I will be is the inaugural work for the Asian Art Museum’s Wilbur Gallery. The museum curator said it became a “source of warmth” for the residents of the city. The piece is incredibly large and easily viewed from the street outside the museum. So you could still walk up and appreciate the art from a distance while the world was in quarantine. 

Originally, Miller had sketched out a scene of a small figure surrounded by large aggressive creatures trying to overtake them, but the figure stands strong - the concept being, “You are bigger than what hurt you." When she found out the space she was offered was ginormous, she changed it. The San Francisco Public Library (coincidentally a direct neighbor of the Asian Art Museum) plans to display her preliminary sketches. Miller's memoir Know My Name about the Stanford sexual assault case from 2016 and her powerful victim statement that went viral was chosen as the Library’s “One City One Book” 2021.

In Miller's memoir, she discusses how healing is cyclical, and this mural embodies how she views the healing process, with empty space in the title I was, I am, I will be to be filled in by the viewer with their own words. Her intent was to keep the mural simple and easily visible by people walking by, so that no matter from which direction they came, the message wouldn’t change. 

Miller grew up drawing on the walls of her home or inking on white mat boards from the Frame-O-Rama where her mother worked. In her animated short I am with you she draws characters on walls who come to life to illustrate her story. This short is what caught the attention of the museum curator and so the original idea was for Miller to draw the piece directly on the wall of the museum. But the pandemic happened, and there were travel restrictions, safety concerns, etc. So instead it was installed as three panels of vinyl.