Walking into the former event hall that remained vacant for years, the first thing one is likely to notice now is the colorful mural at the very back center of the room on the wall of a stage, featuring a large dove as its centerpiece.

“If I could break it down into something, it is about renewal and second chances,” said Frank Casazza, the artist and creator known as Eyeformation, based out of Lowell with his wife, Ellen Casazza. “It’s about being able to reinvent yourself, regardless of what your history and past has been, it is just an innate ability we have to renew ourselves, and a bit of this is reflective of that process to me.”

Frank Casazza described the mural as being somewhat in layers, with a sort of splattered, unrefined layer underneath a more colorful, clear layer of shapes, overlaid again by the dove in the center.

It was painted over the course of about six visits over a week and a half, and was completed on Tuesday.

Frank Casazza’s murals can be seen in different places throughout Lowell, typically outdoors. The only challenge he found indoors was a pipe running down near the center of the wall the mural was painted on, but he integrated it into the full painting nearly seamlessly.

The Recovery Cafe is the second such facility run by Riverbend, the first being in Lowell.

“Everything we do here is to convey the value and the immeasurable potential and the goodness within every individual, regardless of substance use, mental health, homelessness, criminal justice involvement,” said Riverbend Director of Recovery Support Services Richard Hollett. “We meet them where they’re at while knowing and upholding their potential to help them come to actualize their potential.”

All of the staff in the cafe have “lived experience” with those very struggles, Hollett said. The peer recovery support center works as a “reverse hierarchy,” where Hollett said the members are the ones who drive the programming, and through weekly recovery circles they “hold each other in loving accountability.”

A key aspect of the recovery cafe’s, Hollett said, is a sense of “radical hospitality.”

“So, when people come in, we are not just going to say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ We are going to make sure they feel we are really happy to see them, have a conversation with them, check in with them and see how they are doing,” said Hollett.

In the population they work with, Hollett said Riverbend has found significant interest in things like art and music, which in part drove the desire to get a mural painted in the building, especially one with a proper stage.

Along with the mural, Ellen Casazza said they also donated a series of Eyeformation coloring books for the cafe members to use.

“They had their first art class and we enjoyed the creative energy so much, we just wanted to contribute to it by donating these to them,” said Ellen Casazza.

Victor Otero, a Haverhill resident, got involved as a member of the Recovery Cafe recently when he found himself in a bad place, and walked by the building one day.

“I came in here, gave it a shot … I came in here crying, I was all disheveled, but I felt that this place was safe,” said Otero. “That was just such a huge, huge thing for me, so I decided to keep on coming.”

Now, after just a few months of being a member, Otero said he can “see a future.”

“I see my wants and needs being within reach,” said Otero. “They keep me on the straight and narrow.”

Otero was able to watch the process of the mural being painted, and said it was “amazing.”

“At the beginning you couldn’t see what was going to be there. I had no idea, nobody knew,” said Otero. “It’s kind of like me. When I first came in here, nobody knew where it was going to go, but I believe coming here has helped me blossom into the person I am.”

The name for the Ray of Light Recovery Cafe comes from Diana Teel, who lost her 29-year-old son, Ray, on March 4, 2020. A nurse by trade, Teel had already been looking into the Recovery Cafe network. In grieving her son, she channeled that energy positively into helping people like her son. After meeting with Riverbend, Teel agreed to work with them and help make the cafe work.

“It has really been a blessing to me, to be able to take something that is, in my eyes, the enemy … with all these overdoses we have been seeing, and turning it into something,” said Teel.

Ray had gone through periods of recovery, but Teel said as it so often goes, it takes just one time to relapse back into the habit. He even had the best insurance one could get, Teel said, but that would get cut off, which would in turn cut him off from the recovery programs it paid for.

“The best thing about the peer-to-peer recovery centers and this Recovery Cafe, it is not insurance, there is no end date … They don’t have to stop coming,” said Teel.

Watching the building come back into use, now with a brand new mural, Teel said it was like watching her own transformation through long-term recovery, and the kind of recovery they are trying to facilitate within the building.