Patriotic mural: an artistic response - response to World Trade Center tragedy

Arts & Activities, Sept, 2002 by Mary Belfi

The day we returned to school after the World Trade Center attack, all teachers were required to spend the first period of the day allowing students to express their feelings about the tragedy that had taken place in our city.

Many of my students were too stressed to verbalize their feelings. This was a good opportunity for my students to experience art as an emotional outlet. I offered them the time, the space and the supplies to become involved in their art, to escape and to benefit from the therapeutic effects of art.

My students illustrated their thoughts and most personal feelings about the tragedy. Some of their sketches were sad, some showed anger, some cried out for revenge, and some revealed pride in our country. When all the sketches were completed, we displayed them without indication of who did which drawing. We discussed the essences of the drawings.

Gradually, the students became much more verbal. As we analyzed the artworks, students talked more and more about how they felt. We talked about why this could have happened. We talked about what might have been done to prevent it, and we talked about the good that came from it. By the end of the period, my students were requesting to do something more about the World Trade Center tragedy. We decided we would do murals on our hallway walls. The theme for our murals would be "Patriotism."

The students worked in teams of five and six. They began with sketches. I made transparencies of their original sketches and we used overhead projectors to trace their designs on the walls. This was much faster than trying to enlarge the design using a grid transfer technique. The drawings were on the wall in a period or two.

We covered the lower, the portion of the wall and the floors with newspaper. We compiled one painting tray for each group, paintbrushes, paper towels, a can for water and several small jars for mixing colors. Much time can be wasted trying to match a color that was previously mixed, so we avoided this problem by mixing colors in jars rather than on a palette if we needed a lot of one color.

At the beginning of each new week we would spend one period critiquing all the murals, some critiques focused on student opinion, some developed from observing slides of paintings by famous artists and muralists. The critiques were always constructive.

We painted nine murals, covering 50 feet of wall space. Each mural was inspired by a quote from one of our national hymns. One student drew the calligraphy for each quote on all the murals. This helped to unify the nine murals. The murals took six weeks to complete.

The murals have become major attractions. Students and staff come out of their way to take another look. The murals seemed to sooth our wounds from Sept. 11, 2001. One of our murals is of the three firefighters raising the flag at ground zero. We are in the process now of painting that image on a large canvas. When it is done we will donate the painting to our local firefighter in gratitude to all who came to the rescue on 9/11, and in memory of all those who died on that day.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students will ...

* participate in cooperative learning.

* learn to work together to be productive.

* experience large-scale production.

* learn that the elements and principles of art apply to every composition regardless of the size of the work.

* use painting techniques to create a realistic image.

MATERIALS

* Pencils

* Drawing paper

* Nylon brushes of various sizes

* Acrylic paints

* Disposable palettes (we use old magazines)

* Small jars

Mary Belfi teaches art at Nathaniel Hawthorne Middle School in Bayside, New York.