Together Murals: Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School
The Rebuilding thru Art Project (RAP) hosted after-school art classes for selected 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders at Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School during the 2007-08 school year. The theme for the art project was the natural environment and its protection. The goal was for students to create a noteworthy and issue-based work of art that would be prominently displayed in their neighborhood near the West Baltimore MARC Station.
Students began by exploring images that showed how artists from around the world and throughout time have represented animals and trees through drawing, painting, and sculpture. Students then learned to draw and paint creations of their own.
From this work, Artist Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen selected original student imagery that he composed into a continuous design for a long mural. The basic format of the design was then transferred on to cloth panels.
Students in the workshops completed the painting of some panels but most were painted during a special four-hour workshop with over a hundred participants-- Lockerman-Bundy students and family members and staff, community volunteers, students and family members and staff from The Park School of Baltimore, and family members of The Hoffberger Foundation, one of the project funders. Participants were tasked with painting within the basic outlines while maintaining the original intent of the student artwork.
The panels were glued to exterior walls of the school in the Summer of 2008.
This “parachute cloth” mural method has been used in Philadelphia for decades. It is long-lasting, participants are able to paint the murals indoors instead of directly on walls, and the final mural is affixed to the building in only a few days.