Avivo Artworks Program—Jes Reyes—Adults—8 hours
This week I taught the mural workshop at Avivo! On Tuesday, I worked with the same group of artists from the collective to finalize the mural design and transfer it to the wall. Before meeting with the artists, I took their designs from last week and combined them to create a digital design that could be easily projected onto the wall. The Artists and I discussed the design, the elements that were used from each persons original design, and made some final adjustments using my tablet before projecting the design on the wall. Before we drew on the wall, I suggested that we wipe the wall down to clear it of any dust or scuff marks so we would have a clean surface to paint onto. Unfortunately, the smell of the cleaning products aggravated one of the artists chemical sensitivities and they were not able to participate in drawing the design on the wall. This was really frustrating and something I should have considered before we began prepping the wall—it was a learning moment for myself and for the collective artists on how to consider the ways we can make spaces and activities accessible or inaccessible for different people.
On Friday, we had the Mural Workshop! It was well attended—Jes said that there wast 12 members who came through during the workshop to learn and help paint. I spoke at the beginning about the process of creating the murals I have previous made, and then moved into a demo about the materials and strategies for painting on the wall with different brushes. Artists were learning about scaling up artwork as well as collaboration and community practices. Many artists were excited and expressed a lot of feelings of power and ownership over the space because of the ability to paint on the actual wall. It was an empowering experience that completely changed the environment of the room leading into the studios.
