Global Collaboration 2.0

If These Walls Could Talk is an Art History Elective that investigates murals as means of a way of communication. During this course I learned about different techniques that are used to make a mural. This class really taught me a lot about art and how art can be a different way to communicate. For my last Action Project I was placed in a group, and we were challenged to come up with a mural that we would install in our new school space. In our mural we wanted to represent the students that are currently attending GCE. We collaged all the student faces to create new faces. The purpose was to show how GCE is considered a community to us. What I enjoyed most about this project was creating the mural, and how it came out. Overall I really enjoyed taking this class.

Name: JV 
Title: Global Collaboration.
Measurements:Media & Techniques: Stencil, Wheatpaste, Block print.

The purpose to the Action Project is to plan and install the mural my group and I came up with. The mural is really bold and unique. The color’s really stand out, the faces pop up and the flower prints are eye catching. The media and technique that we used to create our mural was block printing, which is one of the oldest types of printmaking technique. One of my group members made two block stamps. She used a linoleum sheet and carved out the pattern. This techniques was my favorite to use because it’s not as messy to work with like other techniques were. I came up with the idea to create a checkerboard pattern with the stamp on one of the walls, and it came out really nice. Stencil flowers were spray painted onto three walls. Stenciling is accomplished by cutting a design onto a thin sheet of cardboard. The stencil is used to reproduce the design multiple times. Lastly, we used wheatpaste, which is an adhesive made from flour and water to adhere the faces to the wall. The wheatpaste was also applied to the top of the images and works as a sealant. Our color scheme is inspired by Shepard Fairy’s Obey street art. There is a lot of red, black, white, and grey. We taught that the colors would bring out and enhance the black and white collaged faces. We also thought the color scheme would look good on the walls our idea is so different compared to the other groups.

The mural definitely transformed the stairway. Before we started working on the mural the stairway was so dull and ugly. The walls were a weird shade of green and was dusty and dirty. The mural is so bold and just catches your eyes instantly, it really brings the staircase to life. The roles that I claimed while making the mural was was the Director of Operations. I was responsible for managing time goals, materials and clean-up. I also worked as the Mule and was responsible for communicating and making sure my group had all the materials they needed. The Documentarian is responsible for documenting the day’s process, and lastly the Artistic Director is the person responsible for making sure the mural is being done right and will turn out perfect. My favorite rule was the Artistic Director, I like everything to be perfect especially when it comes to an art project so I would try and voice my opinion on how things should look or how we should place something. But at the same time, this role was difficult because my group members were very picky and did not want to change the design of the mural. It was hard working with my group because if I had an idea on how to improve something, my group members would always disagree.

If I could change anything about the project, I would want to change the timing. I feel like this course was really rushed and not well organized. I think we should’ve started the mural making way sooner than we did because some groups including mine couldn’t finish or couldn’t do the murals perfect like we would have wanted them to turn out. I would want to change my group, we did not work well together, we didn’t communicate well, and just overall as a group we would always clash ideas and get frustrated with each other. All members in my group envisioned the mural to come out differently and some wanted it their way or no way, and I think as a group that’s not fair. I think if my group would have communicated more we would have gotten along better.