mural studio

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Looks like I’ll have to resize a couple of these images outside of the website.  They might take a few moments to load for you. 

These are murals created by students at Bellevue University, where I teach a class called Contemporary Mural Studio.  It is an incredibly dynamic learning environment in which groups of up to twenty-one students – most without art foundations – create several murals in one quarter! 

Many of the murals we produce have latin themes, reflecting the backgrounds of many students as well as the course’s roots in it’s original form, Mexican and Conemporary Murals, in which we studied the history of the Mexican Muralist Movement and its three great masters (Los Tres Grandes) – Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros.  I presented a slide lecture on Orozco and Rivera at the Joslyn Museum this past December 2008, during their Diego Rivera exhibit. 

Some recent murals form a series called Identidades Latinas, which consists of six faces:  barbaric and civilized Aztecs, barbaric and civilized Europeans, an African and the revolutionary.  The faces in this series are of  my design.  Others include a rendition of the bas-relief sarcophagus lid of  Pacal, Mayan emperor of Palenque and copies of Jesus Helguera’s famous calendar illustrations of Aztec myths and Mexican life.

Last summer, 2008, we had the opportunity to build a class around preparing students to help Philadelphia artist, Meg Saligman, paint a humongous mural in downtown Omaha called “Fertile Ground”.  We did this through the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.  What a fantastic job they did!  Read about Saligman’s project at http://www.omahamuralproject.org/pages/pressarticle1.html.

For our home-based murals, we use Permacryl exterior latex satin from Diamond Vogel, 1″-4″ Elder & Jenks Shipmate brushes and “flex” vinyl fabric of reused billboards supplied to us for free by Lamar Outdoor Advertising.  So, these are portable and intended for outdoor display on buildings. 

The studio room itself is of my design and features 17 feet of wall height before reaching the windows, three walls averaging 26 feet, three rolling tables with underneath storage shelving, a moveable wall for working on one side and dry erase on the other, storage that can accomodate six 16×52 foot murals without any folding, two scaffolds and multiple ladders, a computer with Photoshop and a projector.