A Field of Light
Wang YMCA Legacy Gala · 2025
A field of light. A path through hardship.
At the 2025 Wang YMCA Legacy Gala, the Mabazza Foundation introduced its first collaborative digitally designed and hand-painted oil artwork created to raise funds and carry a message of survival, hope, and forward motion.
A painting created to become part of something larger.
In 2025, the Wang YMCA Legacy Gala became the setting for an important first in the Mabazza Foundation’s creative journey.
The evening marked the debut of the Foundation’s first collaborative digitally designed and hand-painted oil artwork created specifically for fundraising and community impact.
Designed by Uchenna Obinabo-Mabazza, the image drew inspiration from the emotional energy of golden wheat fields, but its meaning came from a deeply personal place: surviving hardship, continuing forward, and learning to recognize light even after a difficult season.
The painting was created as a reminder that the landscape of a life may be shaken, bent, or transformed without losing its horizon.
A golden path through hardship.
Deep blues churn across the sky while gold moves through the field below. The surface carries texture, turbulence, warmth, and motion. Nothing in the landscape feels completely still.
A small tree stands between the darkness and the radiant sun. It is not untouched by the weather around it, yet it remains rooted, visible, and alive.
The glowing horizon pulls the eye forward. It does not deny the storm behind it. Instead, it makes a quieter promise: difficulty does not possess the final word.
There is still light ahead. There is still a path. There is still something worth walking toward.
Every element carries part of the story.
The painting speaks through atmosphere rather than explanation.
Its field, tree, sky, and sun each hold a different part of the journey from survival toward possibility.
Endurance in motion
The wheat bends and shifts beneath an unsettled sky, becoming a symbol of lives changed by hardship without being erased by it.
A survivor remains
Small against the scale of the landscape, the tree stands rooted and visible, carrying persistence into the center of the image.
Memory and turbulence
The swirling blues hold movement, uncertainty, and the emotional weather that can remain long after a difficult experience.
A quiet promise
The radiant light does not erase what came before. It offers a destination and reminds the viewer that the horizon remains open.
Hardship may bend the field, but it does not erase the horizon.
The landscape was shaped by the emotional experience of moving through illness, uncertainty, recovery, and the search for something luminous beyond them.
The painting does not present hope as something delicate or effortless. Its light exists beside turbulence, shadow, and the evidence of weather.
That contrast is essential. Hope becomes meaningful not because darkness never arrived, but because light continued to exist within the same landscape.
For the Mabazza Foundation, this is where art and healing meet: not in denying what hurts, but in creating somewhere for pain, courage, memory, and possibility to remain visible together.
The Wang YMCA Legacy Gala
A night of community, generosity, and shared purpose.
At the gala, the painting became more than an artwork displayed in a room. It became part of a larger celebration of the programs, people, and relationships that keep the Wang YMCA welcoming and accessible to the community.
A person sees something, feels something, and chooses to help.
The Legacy Gala demonstrated how generosity can begin with an emotional connection.
Guests gathered to celebrate community service and raise essential support for the YMCA. Within that atmosphere, the painting offered a visual expression of the very qualities the YMCA helps cultivate: resilience, belonging, healing, wellness, and new beginnings.
Its purchase helped generate funding for YMCA programs and operations, allowing the work to move from a private creative vision into a practical act of community support.
Art opened the conversation
The painting invited guests to pause, reflect, and connect with the emotional meaning of survival and forward movement.
Generosity gave it direction
The purchase transformed an artistic response into tangible support for programs serving the wider Chinatown community.
Community extended the story
The artwork found a new home, while the resources it helped raise continued into YMCA programs, relationships, and services.
A golden field met a lighthouse in the storm.
The purchase of the original painting inspired another meaningful act of generosity.
Susan, who purchased the field painting, attended with a friend who was moved to purchase a second work: a print of a lighthouse standing through rough seas with its light still shining.
The two pieces spoke in different visual languages, but they carried the same essential message.
Light after hardship
Golden wheat moves beneath a turbulent sky while a radiant sun draws the viewer toward a horizon still filled with possibility.
There is something ahead worth walking toward.Guidance through the storm
A tower remains steady against rough water, sending its light outward as a symbol of protection, endurance, and direction.
There is a light strong enough to reach through the storm.The art found new homes. Its impact remained in the community.
Proceeds from the artwork supported the Wang YMCA’s programs and operations, helping sustain a welcoming place where people can strengthen their health, relationships, confidence, and sense of belonging.
The YMCA serves children and families, older adults, newcomers, cancer survivors, people living with chronic illness, and community members who may otherwise face financial barriers to participation.
This is what the Mabazza Foundation hopes art can do. It can tell a story, brighten a space, help someone feel less alone, and generate support for organizations performing meaningful work every day.
One purchase can travel through an entire community.
The value of the evening extended beyond the moment the artwork changed hands.
Funds raised through the gala help support the programs, facilities, and community relationships that allow the Wang YMCA to remain accessible and responsive.
Room to learn and grow
Programs give children and young people opportunities for recreation, confidence, connection, and healthy development.
Wellness and belonging
Seniors find movement, companionship, familiar faces, and a continuing place within the life of the community.
Support beyond treatment
Cancer survivors and people living with chronic illness can find wellness resources, understanding, and community connection.
Access for more people
Financial support helps reduce barriers and keeps YMCA programs welcoming to people from many backgrounds and circumstances.
There is a way forward. There is light in the distance.
A field after hardship and a lighthouse in rough water carried one shared promise: hope can survive the weather and continue guiding us.
Legacy is also what we help make possible for others.
The 2025 Legacy Gala revealed how a single creative act can enter a much wider current of generosity.
The painting began as a vision of light after hardship. At the gala, it became part of a story involving two purchasers, two new homes for meaningful artworks, and continuing support for an organization rooted in service.
A field of wheat. A lighthouse in a storm. A YMCA serving its neighborhood. A community choosing to help.
Together, they remind us that legacy is not only what remains after us. It is also the shelter, opportunity, encouragement, and hope we help create while we are here.
The horizon remains open
Through art and generosity, the path forward became brighter.
The Mabazza Foundation extends its gratitude to the Wang YMCA of Chinatown, the organizers and supporters of the Legacy Gala, the purchasers who gave these artworks meaningful new homes, and every person who continues to believe that creativity can serve a community.
This first collaborative oil artwork established a path for the Foundation’s continuing work: create from lived experience, translate that experience into beauty, and allow the work to carry resources back into the places where people gather, heal, and belong.
The sky may remain turbulent. The field may continue to move. Yet the sun still pulls the eye forward, reminding us that hope does not need a perfect landscape in order to shine.