My Last School Mural.... (For Awhile)

Hello Readers! I am now writing you from Portland, Oregon! It's my 3rd day living in the city and so far, I am happy and excited about what's going on up here. I moved only 2 hours away (I was living in Eugene), so everything still feels like home...ish. It's still rainy Oregon, and I have been taking trips up to Portland since I was little, so there's a lot that's very familiar. I also have many friends in town, so once I start seeing everyone, I think this will start to feel even more like home. It's by far, the easiest move I've ever made. But it's also different in another way: it's permanent for the foreseeable future. I've moved to Laguna Beach and Oakland, CA., Philadelphia, PA., and 2 different rural villages in Madagascar. All of which, I moved to without knowing anyone, or much about the place at all. Those moves were some big adjustments, but they always had an end-date... they were temporary. 

Anyway, here I am in the city now, starting this new part of my life. I'm working half-time as a Graphic Designer for Portland Jewish Academy. So far, it's been great. I like the Marketing team that I'm working with - everyone else has been really nice, too. I'm getting to design fliers and things already, it's fun! In the rest of the time, I'm going to be working on getting my mural business going. I'm looking forward to that part a lot. But I did leave a pretty cool job back home. I will really miss being an Artist in Residence in the schools. I do hope to get on a Teaching Artist's roster here though, so that I can continue teaching kids. It's so much fun. Here was my last project with an after school program in Springfield. The school is called Two Rivers Dos Rios, and their mascot is the otter. Hence, the two rivers and otter imagery. Only snapped a couple of pics of this in progress, but I'll be posting more once I get shots of the final installed piece. The kids did great on this! It was a nice wrap-up to my time teaching in Eugene. 

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!

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