Teaching Teachers Mural Making!

Hey Everyone!

This week, I did something I've never done before; I taught teachers! For almost 3 years, I worked as an Artist in Residence, teaching art and mural-making to students grades K-12. I loved it a WHOLE LOT. There were only two major cons to that gig: #1 I never stayed at one school long enough to form real bonds and working relationships with the kids and other faculty. As soon as I learned everyone's names, it seemed I had to switch again. #2, I made good money when I was working, but the residencies came very unpredictably, making it hard to make a living.  So I made a change, and moved to Portland to be a graphic designer/muralist. Combined, my two jobs now allow me to have those lasting working relationships, and make living. But I do miss teaching very much sometimes. Having never studied education, I learned what I did about it through watching other teachers (I was in SO many classrooms, I got to observe their styles and what worked and what didn't) and through my own trial and error. 

This week, I was able to share what I've learned with teachers. It felt good to pass that knowledge along to people who can use it. My mom is a retired teacher of 30+ years, so we got to teach the seminar together! My mom gave her presentation on making paper collage murals, and I gave mine about making painted murals. She has the huge knowledge base of having taught for that long, and I was coming at it from a place of being an artist. It was really a great combo and we complimented each other's presentations, and reinforced each other's points really well. 

After we gave presentations for an hour, we used the second hour to get teacher's hands a little dirty and actually made stuff! We split the room of 40 teachers into 2 groups; one group practiced painted murals, one practiced paper murals. I was busy facilitating my group, so don't have any good pics of my mom's groups' paper mural, but it came out really amazing! I was so impressed with what they painted with me too! They worked on 2 different panels, and came together to make artistic decisions. It was pretty cool to watch them use some of the principles I taught. Check out the pics below.

If you are interested in making painted murals in your classroom, or with another group, you can get my presentation with this link:

Click here for the downloadable pdf

Happy weekend and till next time, 

Corie

Friendship Mural with Oakridge Students

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!

Civil Rights Mural Progress

Our Civil Rights Mural is really coming along!  Take a look at these kids working away in the photos below.  

We've been working on this for 7 days after school now, and I am SUPER impressed by their energy and talent.  These kids have been working with a couple teachers to put on an assembly to celebrate Cesar Chavez.  They've booked speakers, ordered t-shirts and motivated each other to come in and paint with me everyday after school for this accompanying mural project.  At the assembly, the kids and teachers will present their work to their school. 

I must admit though that the phrases "I can't", "I'm not an artist", "Am I doing this right?, "You could do it better!" come up more in these higher grade levels (this includes Middle School), than with the Elementary kiddos.  It can be tough as an art teacher to think of good responses to these types of comments from kids.  I just try to stay encouraging and make sure to keep pointing out the SPECIFIC things that I see them doing well.  I think that's the key: not just saying "oh, nice job, I love it!" but saying things like, "that hi-light color really brings out his eyes now" or whatever it is.  The other thing I like to constantly remind kids when they are self-doubting or self-deprecating, is that to do anything well takes a LOT of practice.  It took me years and years of crappy paintings and crappy drawings to be able to do what I do now (which can still turn out crappy even still!).  You have to be patient with yourself whenever you're learning something new. 

Enjoy and stay tuned for pics of the final mural!

Idea Mapping/ Visual Brainstorming

After the last few weeks at Walterville Elementary (see the flurry of posts before this one), I moved immediately on to my current school: Junction City High School.  I am working with the kids in their after school program, to put together a mural about Civil Rights to be installed in time for their annual school celebration of Cesar Chavez, the Latino-American worker's rights advocate.  

Facilitating teachers and I set up a time to meet with involved students to discuss their mural.  The day of our meeting, the students were SO enthusiastic, creative, and ambitious! Exciting!

Here is the process I like to go through to help people figure out what they want out of a mural, and some images to start designing with.  Here's how we did it:

 I started out by asking the students to give me ONE WORD that would describe what they wanted their mural to be about.  They settled on "Equality".  I wrote that word in the middle of the chalkboard, and circled it.  I asked them to name some names of Civil Rights workers that they wanted to include in the mural.  They came up with MLK Jr., Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez of course, Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks and Abraham Lincoln.  I put each of those up as bubbles branching from the center equality bubble.  Then, I asked students to think of some key images that could tell the story of each of these people's accomplishments.  Those became smaller bubbles branching out from their respective people bubbles. Our idea map was beginning to fill out.

What were they trying to say with all of this? I went into my little speech about how murals are a great way to teach others about something, say something publicly and tell a story through pictures.  What did they want to tell current and future students about these people? They said the purpose would be as a reminder to fight for good things non-violently, a record/memorial piece for these people, and a teaching tool about who they were.

Once we got all the ideas on there, I asked the kids about how they wanted to organize all this information.  The first thing they did, was get rid of Lincoln and Rosa Parks. They decided it was too much, and Lincoln wasn't really into non-violence.  One girl had the idea to have protestors as a consistent element all the way across the mural, but changing according to whoever they were next to. For example, the protestors next to Chavez would be holding signs that said different things than the protestors next to Susan B. Anthony.  Genius!!  And of course, there would need to be portraits of all these people, with maybe the images that represented them behind their heads.  So many good ideas.  I went home and played around on Photoshop to combine their ideas into the sketch below:

My contribution, was the idea to have each person's section divided by different monochromatic color schemes.  All the way around the border of the mural, there will be quotes from the leaders.  The mural will be 4'x16'.  I'm so excited about this project!  Check back here soon to see how it's been going!!

Oregon Mural with Walterville Elementary

My last few posts have been full of lessons and projects from my lastest residency at Walterville Elementary.  But we also had a main attraction at the Corie-art-room-takeover: an 8'x20' mural!!  Here's how it worked:

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This mural project was created with all 190 students, grades K-5 at Walterville Elementary School in Walterville, OR.  The process was typical of a mural residency with me and went as follows:

• Initial planning meeting with staff to discuss their ideas for the residency and mural theme.  They decided on an "Oregon" theme. 

• Teachers had every student make drawings depicting their ideas of Oregon, and sent them all to me!

• I took all student's drawings and took inventory of the images and incorporated their ideas into an overall mural design. 

• We completed the mural in a little over 2 weeks.  Each classroom got to have about 8 sessions with me, and most children painted on the mural multiple times.  I taught grade level appropriate lessons for each class to work on, focusing on the techniques of master artists throughout history.  While students were all working on these projects, I rotated small groups of children to paint the mural. 

Here it is, in a few pictures.  I can't wait until the panels are installed onto their wall so I can show you the whole thing, put together!  Keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks ;)

Showing the kiddos how to lay paint down

Putting apples in the apple orchard!

Stayin' busy making Jim Dine-style Valentines while a couple painters are going in the background.

Making a starry starry night (heh, art teacher pun for the win!)

Cutest ever.

So many trees!!

Adding architectural details to the city

Done! But not yet installed. This is only about 3.5 of the 5 panels we made.

From Left to Right:  Oregon Coast--> River--> Rural Oregon--> Forest-y Mountains--> Cityscape

First Grade Cityscapes

This lesson was the first grader version of this self portrait lesson that I did with all the older kids (grades 2-5) during my last residency.  I figured that we'd use all the same materials and techniques, just with a different subject matter.  Not that first graders couldn't do self portraits, but probably not the proportions lesson that I went through with the older kids. Anyway, here's what we did:

Materials:

• white paper

• star sequins

• sharpies in dark colors

• "bleeding" art tissue cut into small squares

• paper scraps for windows and half sheets of black (cut the long "hot dog" way)

1.) Have kids draw "space-y" things in sharpie on their white papers. Planets, spaceships, stars, etc. etc. Pretty cute to see what they come up with here. 

2.) Have them lay out their tissue paper squares over their drawings. Come around and spray water on the finished ones. Peel off tissue paper. If it's not colored enough, this process can be repeated, for a more saturated, layered effect. 

3.) When these are dry, show a couple cityscape examples and talk about shapes they could use for their skyline silhouettes. Hand out a half sheet of black to each kid and have them draw and cut out their city skylines in one piece if they can. Glue little windows onto them, and add sequins in the sky if you want. Super cute!

It's finished...and only just begun.

I got written up in the local newspaper today for my latest project!  It came out in papers today and was well-written and thorough.  Read the article here.  

The pilot project is almost complete! And I say "almost" because even though our part of the mural is finished, it still has a long way to travel to get to its final destination.  I will ship out the mural this weekend. I just got an email from the Peace Corps Volunteer who will receive it for his village.  He says:

Hey Corie,

The painted mural looks awesome!  We're really lucky to have that coming to Tsivangiana.  Last week I met with a group of five mpanentanas (health workers/informers) there.  We plan to use the mural to launch a week of malaria trainings - on bed nets (we're going to go house by house and check bed net usage, take pictures of people there doing it right and wrong, and put these next to the mural as examples - like a Wall of Bed Net Fame) and on making Neem Cream (a natural bug repellant).  We haven't yet finalized the programme/dates but we're looking at maybe the last week in January.  I will let you know.  The ladies (the mpanentanas) are really mazoto (diligent) so I think it's going to be great.  We'll try to get the most out of this great mural you all have made!  And yes we'll make sure to send you all lots of pics.   

Thanks,

Eddie  

So awesome!! I feel overwhelmed with... I guess the word is satisfaction.  It's the same feeling as when I've had a painting in my head for ages, finally paint it, and it comes out just right or better than I imagined.  I dare say, I feel proud of myself.  I also feel very grateful to those who helped me get all this together.  My whole Peace Corps family was so willing to jump in and help: other volunteers, my former supervisor and language teachers there.  My expert muralists I learned this cloth-mural technique from over the summer at my internship with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.  My friends and family here listened to me and helped me sort through ideas.  Thank you all so much!!!

The pilot project went great.  Now it's sort of like, what's the next logical step for this thing?  I hope to do more of these with more schools in Eugene and Portland (next school year).  Then, who knows..... maybe someday this can become my J.O.B. through some big health organization (COUGH*Population Services International*COUGH) so kids in the U.S. can make health murals for places all over Africa or the rest of the developing world.  For now, I'm reveling in my first victory. But.... "Dream Big", right? 

I'll leave you with some visuals:

Our mural: 

Panel 1.) washing the mosquito net with regular soap instead of detergent. 

Panel 2.) Hanging it in the shade to dry (so it doesn't lose it's mosquito repellent). 

Panel 3.) tuck it in really good under your mattress. 

Panel 4.) Fix any holes in the net. 

This was the original mural design. The folks in the village in Madagascar will be the ones to finish the border and the words in Malagasy, explaining each panel. 

Thanks for reading,

Corie

Madagascar Mural Collaboration Residency: Days 1-3

Well, it's FINALLY HAPPENING!!!  After coming up with the idea in August, sending many emails back and forth between continents, researching materials, planning lessons, talking to school administrators and teachers and getting a grant funded to pay me for teaching time, I FINALLY got to do my Madagascar Mural Collaboration art residency! 

In case you missed previous blogs about this, click here to read about the forming of the idea, or read the rest of this paragraph.  This all started last Summer, when I did an internship with the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia.  There, I learned that you can paint on a specialized fabric and then install it on any wall you want.  I have been working in schools doing residencies that involve painting murals permanently on the school wall(s).  But after learning this new technique, I had the idea to have my students paint a mural on this special fabric then ship it to Madagascar (where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer 2008-2010) to be installed.  There has been a recent push for Peace Corps Volunteers to organize the painting of murals in their villages that double as public art and health teaching tools around the subject of Malaria prevention.  The mural I am having the students paint is based on care and proper use of mosquito nets (a form of Malaria prevention).  When it arrives, a current Peace Corps Volunteer will install this mural on the wall of the hospital in their village.  There is text on the mural explaining the pictures, but the pictures are really important because of the high illiteracy rates in the rural village.  We left some pieces of the mural unfinished, so that the villagers who will eventually have it on their hospital, can finish it.  This makes the project a collaborative mural between American and Malagasy people.    

This Madagascar art residency was done with almost 90 4th graders at Holt Elementary School over the last 7 days.  During this week, we have been studying Madagascar, doing art lessons related to the country's flora/fauna, and working on the mural.  

Before beginning the residency, I showed kids a little slideshow with some basic facts about Madagascar, and some pictures I took while I was there....followed by a long Q&A session with the kids.  I got, "How do they go to the bathroom?" "What was the weirdest thing you ate there?" "Were you scared all the time?" etc. 

The first day, we made "passports".  These were just little blue and white construction paper booklets that acted as the kid's journals for the residency.  Every new fact, and every new Malagasy word they learned, got written in their passports.  They even drew eagles on the front, and filled out their info on an inside page, complete with tiny self-portrait "passport photos".  Super cute. 

The first 3 days of the residency, after making the passports, we did an art project about chameleons.  All kids worked on their chameleons in the classroom, while I periodically pulled a few kids aside to work on the mural.  If you want to learn how to do the chameleons lesson with your kids or students, read on! 

CHAMELEONS LESSON:

You need:

-watercolor sets and brushes

-yellow construction paper, brown strips of paper, half sheets of green paper

-skinny black "Teacher Pens" as the kids call them. (Felt tip markers)

Day 1:

(The first day, we spent half the class making passports, so this part and the Day 2 step may actually be combined).  This day, we did a step-by-step follow along drawing of a chameleon in pencil on white paper. The kids draw, as you draw. Show them how to make a "jelly bean" shaped body, then add a triangle head, legs, back spikes, etc.

Day 2:

This day, break out the watercolors, and have the kids paint those suckers. Show some pics of real chameleons to get them inspired by their colors, patterns, etc.  These have to dry overnight.

Day 3:

Outline and draw designs on them with the felt tip pens.  Cut out the chameleons.  Use the brown strips and green half sheets to make leaves and branches.  Have them arrange everything on the yellow backgrounds, and paste down.  Remind them that it will help make things look more dimensional if they overlap a few leaves on top of their chameleons.  Done and DONE!  So cute, right?!

Thanks for reading, and check back soon for the rest of the week's Madagascar projects!

Corie