UMass Boston

Recent UMass Boston graduate Rafaela Astudillo won a design contest to create a custom Bluebikes wrap representing healthy communities in Boston. Sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBS) in partnership with UMass Boston’s Art Department, the contest invited students to create moving works of public art as part of the Boston 250 celebration.

Recent graduate and art major Rafaela Astudillo won the BCBS Bluebikes design contest at UMass Boston. This competition included a $5,000 donation to the Art Department from BCBS and a $5,000 prize for the winning student, whose design was selected by a series of voting committees including the City of Boston’s Creative Team.

Astudillo described how it felt to learn she had won.

“I was shocked because there were really good designs that my peers submitted,” she said. “I was like, oh my god, and then I was just so ecstatic.”

Astudillo graduated this spring with a bachelor's degree in studio art and a minor in cinema studies. Her work focuses on the intersection between sculpture and video installation though she was originally trained in painting and printmaking.

The win came as a surprise for Astudillo, who does not typically work in graphic design. She entered the contest after her professor, Wenhua Shi, offered students in a graphic design workshop the option to complete the competition as one of their class assignments.

“I used Illustrator for my class, but I was not extremely familiar with the software,” Astudillo said. “So I just did the contest as the assignment, and then we all submitted.”

The contest prompted students to create designs focused on healthy communities in Boston in celebration of the city’s diverse neighborhoods.

For her design, Astudillo drew inspiration from the ways people move through the city.

“I was really thinking about the different maps we use,” she said. “I took a blueprint of the city of Boston and put it into Illustrator.”

She used a map and blueprint with positives and negatives of the city to create her design and show all the neighborhoods that make up Boston.

Photo provided by BCBS Massachusetts; photo by Faith Ninivaggi.

Perhaps one of the most exciting parts for Astudillo is the opportunity to see her artwork become part of everyday life in Boston.

“The fact that people are going to have this piece that I made and it's going to be moving around and transporting different people just feels really surreal and exciting,” she said.

This summer, Astudillo is preparing for her next artistic adventure. In the fall, she will travel to Mexico City after receiving the Ruth Butler Travel Scholarship, where she will spend three months working as a studio assistant for a Mexican-based artist while exploring Latin American art.

Before that though, she’ll be keeping an eye out for a familiar Bluebike.

“I love biking,” Astudillo said. “It's like my favorite thing in the world, so the fact that I could make a design that's on one of my main outlets is crazy.”

Starting June 22, riders can see Astudillo’s Boston 250 bike design moving through the city.