Hartranft Mural Corps Student Blog #3

This week We're going to start off the blog with 2 interviews we weren't able to film last week due to the heatwave.
Lindsey and Shelby Jackson, sisters in the Corps class, interview Dr Judith McMonagle (The school Principal) and yours truly.
The questions center around the impact of the mural on the neighborhood and school and my experiences as a teacher, collaborating on murals with students.

Hartranft Student Interview #2


Hartranft Student Interview #3


Click on the thumbnail to view larger photo

During Week 4 we began painting the main "Honor Wall" mural. The logistics of which is tricky as we are only able to have 3 people on the lift at a time. One of those 3 people needed to be myself or my assistant teacher/muralist Desiree Bender. So we recruited our fastest painters and got to work.



Meanwhile the rest of the class soldiered on continuing to cut glass and arrange the mosaic, as well as begin the final touches on the seed wall.




Finally we return to the second installment of


Khalil's iPhone was down for a few days due to a screwy firmware update. He was back in business by the end of the week capturing everyone at work. Here are his best shots this week...

Click on the thumbnail to view larger photo














This coming week should be a good one. Weather permitting, we will be trying to get most of the Honor wall blocked in. The glass work will be close to finished as well. All in all we are wrapping up this mural right on time. Next week on the blog there will be more video interviews as well as writing from each student about the project thus far.

Hartranft Mural Corps Student Blog #2

Click on the thumbnails to view larger image

Here we are in week 3.
The students spent most of this past week getting acquainted with the glass cutting tools and handling mosaic patterns.





Some elected to do some of the touch up painting on the ground level wall


The main mural wall was put on hold these past few weeks due to wires that needed to be wrapped. Our scissor lift comes within a foot of these wires and we had to wait on PECO. They finally arrived on Monday, and now we are able to proceed with the Tree of Honor wall!

My class kicked off a series of interviews this week. Time was spent writing a set of good open ended questions for each subject of the interview. Unfortunately the heatwave cut our week short and we were unable to film 2 more interviews we had planned. Here is the only one we were able to film this week... the remainder will appear in next weeks blog.

Hartranft Student Interview #1




and finally...

Khalil has always kept his day to day activities well documented through his iPhone. Since he has started on this mural he's taken dozens of photos of our work almost every day. We are all secretly jealous  of how hip and tech savvy he is. Here are some of his best photos...

Click on the thumbnail to view the larger image.

Elwyn Video update

Updated video of the Behavioral Health Mural's progress on the main page's video section. 

Check it!

Hartranft Mural Corps Student Blog #1

This summer, my Corps class will be painting and installing a mural at the corner of 6th and Cumberland Street in North Philadelphia. Hartranft Elementary School is home to a massive Public Art transformation this year. The entire city block is being beautified with mosiac, ceramic, glass and painting, as well as undergoing a massive "green" facelift. Trees plants and an orchard have been planted and cared for on site.  

My spring class designed one wall of this project, dubbed the "Tree of Honor", which gives recognition to long standing community leaders (or seeds as they appear in the design). 

The tree will be mostly painted, but the trunk and seeds will have a stained glass mosaic element. 

The Main artist on the project, Jennie Shanker, designed this interior wall we will also be painting. 

Jennie has a blog that documents this massive multimedia undertaking going on in North Philly. You can read more about her project here, shes done a great job of showing all of the work that has gone into her mural and the changes its bringing about

http://muralartstylerhartranft.blogspot.com/

We will be posting pictures and video of our progress on the mural every week this summer. I will be turning over these blog entries to my students who will be in charge of documenting our work and what they have learned. 

This is Okdeh Corps Class: Summer 08

  
  

 
  

 

...and these are the photographs they have taken so far. 

Priming, Gridding and Drawing

Color Mixing

Glass Seed Cement-Board Shaping

Painting

In the next week we will be taking video and you'll get to hear about the project first hand from the students who assisting in its completion. 

Stay Tuned...