United States of America Community Freedom Flag (Utah Edition)
| International Children's Festival |
| Through art education led by celebrated St. Albert artist Lewis
Lavoie, the value of community art projects comes to life as young
artists paint tiles about subjects that are important to them. Almost magically,
the individual pieces come together to create a finished mural known as the
Pubble People! |
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| Chinese Zodiac Animals |
2010 began the year of the Tiger! It also marked the beginning of an exciting project working with over 2000 students from the Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association. Over the next 12 months the students will be creating 12 collaborative murals by painting over 2000 4 inch x 4 inch tiles forming the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.
Ever since I was a child when we would go to Chinese restaurants I would spend so much time reading through the Chinese Zodiac horoscopes on the place mats and go around the table asking everone which animal they were. I am a monkey and I am sure my parents would testify to that! |
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On Constitution day 2009 we unveiled the mural. Over 300 students could take extra pride in the flag that they created. The flag symbolized not only a proud nation, but also a proud community of students. It was a wondrous thing to witness as their artwork represented so many individual ideas, styles, themes and techniques yet still came together beautifully and showed the power of unity through diversity.
IStudents of all ages contributed to the mural.Their enthusiasm was contagious and the more we worked with them the more excited we got as the mural began to take shape. Many painted what they experienced daily in their own community while some painted significant monuments or moments in time in the nations history. South Jordan City has a beautiful view of the mountains and was once the host of the Winter Olympics. Thus mountains were a common theme in many of the paintings.
In 2010 we traveled to South Jordan City Utah and worked together with 13 different schools to create a mural to celebrate the United States of America. It was an incredible experience as we spent a week travelling from school to school talking about art and watching as these young artists created beautiful paintings to help bring this mural to life.
IIt has been an exciting process to see the diversity in each painting thus far. Whether it is a painting of one of the animals or a chinese character symbolizing the animal, all animals from the Zodiac can be found throughout each mural. The students at ME LaZerte high school are really enjoying creating their paintings as much as we are enjoying assembling them into the mural.
coming next: -HORSE -- RAM
- MONKEY
Kids of all ages came by and visited Lewis daily and watched intently in amazement as he demonstrated various painting techniques and explained how they could use colors and shapes to make their individual paintings come to life.
The creativity that each child presented through their individual ideas was wonderful to experience one painting at a time.Lewis would emphasize how each painting was very important to make the big picture come to life. So every painter felt incredible pride knowing that their contribution would be celebrated by the community as a whole.
Probably the most exciting moment was when Lewis had the kids place their paintings into the mural. As each piece was carefully placed the pubble people came to life.
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Lewis has been giving the students great lessons in how to paint using certain colors, tones and shapes in order to bring these murals to life. At the same time Lewis has been learning from the students the characters that are used in the Chinese Language to portray each Zodiac symbol. |
Each class we visited was full of enthusiastic students. As the paintings were completed one by one the murals began to take shape!!
The students from McNally High School really enjoyed taking a break from their hard studies and had a great time adding their creative touch to the mural. |
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