Pola Lopez had never restored a mural of her own before.

Then a car crashed into her sprawling work on a wall at the intersection of Hickox and Baca streets.

“I’ve done many murals, but that was the first time I’d ever had a car actually run through the wall and knock the wall down,” Lopez said.

The Three Sisters Collective — an Indigenous, women-led grassroots organization in Santa Fe — initially commissioned Lopez to paint the mural, called Corn Maiden Storyteller: Shards of Our Stories , in 2022. The nature of the May 1 crash — including why it happened and whether there were any related arrests — is unknown.

Last week — months after the crash severely damaged the cinderblock structure and the mural — Lopez finished painting and varnishing the now-restored version of the artwork.

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