Friendship Mural with Oakridge Elementary
After my last school mural with the Civil Rights theme and working with the high schoolers, this little mural was simple, fun and quick, by contrast. It's been a fun little piece, made by a fun little group of kids. At Oakridge Elementary in Oakridge, OR., the students do not have school on Fridays. I've found this to be true at a couple of the more rural school districts I've worked at. Fridays are optional. It's pretty sad, really, that the funding has been cut so severely that kids and teachers have 4 day weeks every single week. But, at least there's grants around that allow artists and guest specialty teachers like me to come and work with the kids who do opt to come on Fridays.
I'm only working with Oakridge for 3 Fridays, so we went pretty small with our mural project (also it had to fit within a pretty tight place in their hallway). We worked on plywood with acrylic paint (as always - environment AND kid-friendly paint). The coordinating teacher wanted the mural's theme to be "friendship" - pretty broad, so this simple little image is what I came up with. Bright, fun to paint, and gets the right message across. Plus, I've been wanting to incorporate the "hanging stars" image into something for awhile now.... my own agenda!
To spice up the project and allow for kids getting bored and needing other stimulation for the 2 hour time block I have with them, I added a collage element for the border. Kids decorated little squares with cut paper people, pets, rainbows, hearts, etc., that we will glue all around the border of the mural. One more Friday to go, can't wait to see this all finished and on the wall!
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