Round 2: Another panel is coming along

Surrounded by the undulating sounds of reggae, french, and an eclectic assortment of musical sounds, students are working on panel 2. They started with a blank slate on Monday and as you can see, it's coming along already. There's still a lot of white space, but as the color builds, images inch closer and closer together and the white spaces become fewer and fewer. 

There's a strong sense of team work and support among the students, which I'm sure helps smooth thing along. There's probably moments of conflicting visions, but overall I'd say it's been fairly agreeable. I'm hearing mostly, "that looks great!" and "I like that a lot" from student to student, which is a positive thing. The Festifools puppets, who fill every corner of the room, would probably be very complimentary as well if they could talk. They've been watching the mural's progression all along.

-Dora

one of the panel references

waiting for paint to dry can be very energetically costly

Mimee's sun 

another panel reference

Zach's work

A Little Background

About the project:

Earlier this summer Meghan O’Neil, Melanie Pizzulo, and David Disney from Palmer Commons approached me to see if my class would be interested in creating a large-scale artwork for installation inside Palmer Commons. After our initial meeting we decided that a particularly interesting expanse of wall on the fourth floor would make a suitable “canvas” for my students to work with. This space, which overlooks an outdoor plaza, (and welcomes guests to the Palmer Commons meeting rooms and auditorium) is quite large—77 feet long and 18 feet high--A beautiful, spacious location, able to be viewed from the outside as well as in; this would be the perfect space for my students to create a mural.

About my class:

This is a pretty unique class of students embarking on a unique project.

The goal of this class (called "Art in Public Spaces" and offered through the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program) is to collaboratively create this large-scale mural for Palmer Commons that is conceptually and aesthetically challenging and appealing. This mural must contain ideas—cogent ideas that are communicated via visual means. This is no small feat.  Asking eleven bright students to figure out a way to create one holistic design meant coming up with a process that both protects and supports their own creative egos along the way.  The students first need to develop a common language for creating the design at the same time that they are actually making the design (verbal communication in this part of the process is very limiting). This "language" must try to transcend communication constraints while acknowledging various skill levels and unique personal aesthetic and conceptual preferences in order to help understand, appreciate and incorporate everyone’s ideas into a realized whole.

Some of the questions students had in the very beginning had to do with just how to begin. Should we have a theme—or not? I mentioned that the LS&A theme for next semester was “Language: The Quintessence”.  Some students thought that could be a powerful way to start. Others (including myself) were dubious. Personally, I’m not sure that themes (particularly non-visual themes) help to jumpstart the creative process—sometimes they can hold too much weight, particularly as an idea begins to gel in a different direction. Eventually some students get married to the theme, while others want to hop on another theme train altogether.  The risk of ending up in a thematic impasse is always imminent.  Themes also have a way of bending ideas towards the trite. (“Love” means Hearts, “Happiness”: Rainbows.)

So my nebulous attempt to introduce and yet not require a theme left some of the students designing based on the “theme” and others not—at least that’s what I think. But somehow the resulting design holds together quite well. The strength of the design decisions made in a collaborative setting (under an artificial time constraint) produced a multi-faceted and exciting design, which I’m sure means something different to each of the individual students involved.

I’m looking forward to being a part of this creative process and, of course, to see what the finished outcome will look like. I hope others will come along on this journey with us and help celebrate once the completed mural is installed later this year.

Special thanks to Dora Zobou Sobze who has volunteered to put together this lovely blog for us!

--Mark

One down, two to go

Here's the completed first panel, running 25 feet! Students have been working so quickly, but that's obviously not detracting from the quality of their work. It looks very vibrant and crazily similar to the original magazine-cut-out collages. Remember those?

-Dora

It's growing!

The first panel is already full of color, it looks like. Barely any negative white spaces are left and it looks great! There's subdued music playing in the background - maybe it's channeling creative energy and focus into the students' work speed. If you are dying to know who these talented artists are, then check out the "Meet the Artists" tab I added recently. It will give you a little background info on their stories. They are all working pretty intensely (and contently) on their mural painting so I won't distract them by asking them to come write for a little about what's going through their minds. They'll let you know sooner or later. Artists are known to take their time with things!

Here's what the mural looked like last week:

Mark giving Zach some instruction

Anna's apple

It's looking a lot more detailed now with its layers of visuals. Here's how it's looking a week later (it's come a long way):

I like taking snapshots like this last one of segments. You get to see all of the details. I'll take more like this later on when it's more complete. It's really all the mini paintings strung together making one huge painting and it's a great piece of artwork as a whole. I would argue in this case though, that the whole isn't always greater than the sum of it's parts. In this case, I think the parts are just as good standing alone. 

I thought this color map was a neat idea (picture below).  Just like nomads and travelers need their maps, artists need theirs, too. Instead of arriving at some distant destination, this map guides you to a desired color. Or at least guides you towards one. It's probably near impossible to mix the same color twice unless you are a machine. But at least this minimalizes any surprises when color-surprises are unwanted. Sometimes predictability is ideal. Take a look:

-Dora

Painting the "Baby"

Initially, when I saw how big the canvas was for one section of the painting, I shook my head and thought no, this cannot be done. Now, after seeing how much we've painted so far, I see that it's not going to take as long as I suspected ^.^ Whew, what a relief!

 Now, all I have to do tomorrow is make the color for the grapes and make the grapes as real as I possibly can (tough) and then find somewhere else to paint (woohoo >.<) Thanks Mark for this painting "torture"



 ---Mimee

The Mural Baby is Born

            

So, the collage design is done. It's like a baby mural. It's waiting to grow into the finished work it's soon to become. Here is the collage cut into panels. There are grid lines laid over the design for spatial planing. I could tel the students really enjoyed working on it. A handful of them voluntarily stayed a long time after class was over to finish up their work. Maybe they were anxious to see the result or didn't want to leave their unfinished work to sit in the room overnight. Maybe they thought its unwholeness (made that word up) would detract from its liveliness. They'll tell you their thoughts when they start writing their own blog posts - which will be soon!

-Dora

It's hard to see, but here's the panels side by side

This is the HUGE cartoon coming together. It takes up most of the floor.

"If You've Got the Glue Stick...

...then you've got the power," according to a student while working on the mural design in class. This seems to be a very true statement in this case, considering tiny glue sticks are responsible for holding together once distant and unrelated images. But it's not just glue sticks that are responsible for the work, it's also the artists behind the collage arrangements and careful spatial, chromatic planning. It's pretty interesting watching the work come together. What started off as a white slate turned into an arangement of bursting color. There are neutral tones, sepias, and black-and-whites as well, but they seem to make the colors stand out even more. 

-Dora

Here are some of the students' thoughts spoken out loud while they worked:


Right?
Ah...
What did you say?
Yeah. I like that.
Wait, what if we have this overlapping this and then...
But do we want the pointyness?
Like the square...
Having it underneath...
Exactly.
Yeah it's glued.
Should we eliminate this part...
Should we take away the other figure and have it just...
It's like running off the eye.
It's like running away.
Exactly.
I like it.
No! Something pretty.
Like this.
You talking to me?
Do you like the apple like that or underneath?
We need to cover...
It'd be cool popping out.
Upside down and like that?
Should I put it like this or no?
Not on her eye!
So what do you want to do?
Where do we put the eight ball?
It was right here...
Let's find something black and white.
What color are we looking for?
Does it have to be black and white...or can it just be a lighter color. You know?
Let's just take that color and put it in here.
I like how this is almost rainbow and this is...
Try that over there...
We can have a black and white one right here.
'Cause I have black and white in this one and in this one...
What do you guys think of that?
You'll figure it out. Something to put over it.
This is kind of cool guys.
Are we cool with it?
We need some right here but I think I'm cool with this.
Yeah it does.
So what I'm understanding, what I understand is something.
I think this is brown.
You're not using the circle of life picture??
We could.
You could stick it under things and poke it out.
Is everyone cool with...
I love that.
I love this.
I like this whoever did this.
Just stick them in random spots.
I like that our pink...we're making pink.
Can we put this one on upside down, yeah.
What do you think we should do here?
I feel like we need color.
There's tons of color in the middle.

I'm just very satisfied with this...
Yeah that's awsome.
Oo, I love the...
Add a little..
You can cut it squiggly, too.
Purple. Yeah, okay perfect.
That looks good.
If you look back from it, it looks so cool to have the brightness and then the...


We like the mushroom?
Yeah we like the mushroom.
Blue kind of breaks it up.
Does it break it up or does it bring it out?
It breaks it up.
This is walking out and this is walking in.
Perfect.
I love that elephant.
Me, too. It's good luck.