MixedMedia

During the weekend of April 11-13, more than a dozen Twinfield staff, parents and students helped to sort, record, and mount the more than 450 “Peace Tiles” that would compose a new mural in the school’s cafeteria. The Peace Tiles – individual collages on 8-inch square wood panel – each responded to the question, “What is my place?” When combined into a mural, they produced single image representing the Central Vermont landscape where they live – a theme selected by the 2008 graduating class.

While the mural represents one of a few large works in the school, there is some concern that students will find the mural a ready target for vandalism. I am not so certain, for two reasons. First is that each student has a piece in the mural: everyone contributed to it, and as a result I would expect that it feels more “owned” by the entire student body. The second reason is that the mural should have some longevity: every student, from pre-K up to the graduating class, contributed to the mural – which means it could be up to 12 years before that bit of school history graduates. In my mind, that’s a pretty lengthy bit of time for a story to circulate. Both aspects of the mural I hope will garner students’ delight and respect for many years to come.

In any event, it was a pleasure to work with everyone at the school, and I certainly learned many good lessons for how to take the Peace Tiles mural project “to scale.”

[In the picture lower right, a Twinfield student places the last tile of the school mural]

[From the Times Argus ] High school students, parents and teachers worked side by side in Twinfield’s cafeteria Tuesday, absorbed in combining paints, bits of paper, lettering and treasures they had brought from home to create tiles that express their sense of place. In another part of the building, the elementary students were creating their own “tiles,” using 8-inch squares of plywood. Ultimately, 480 tiles will be used to form a huge mosaic – perhaps a river – on a wall of the cafeteria.

Swirls of color revolved around a dark center on Steffany Yasus’ tile. “In my English and physics classes, we were talking about the universe,” the Plainfield junior explained. Thoreau’s words radiated from the core: “The world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

Across the table from her, Darcy Brett, a mathematics teacher, fitted a small map of the United States on the left side of her tile and a map of Europe on the right side, on top of a blue sea filled with a pattern of white birds. “My husband is from France and I’m from Vermont, and the birds represent all the coming and going,” she said. Her tile remained unfinished at the end of the day: She was looking for a bright bird to put in the middle.

Nearby, Lindsey Fowler, her blonde hair pinned up in a clasp, worked on a collage. Tears filled her eyes. The words “Mike” and “Inspire,” stood out among pictures of a big, happy boy surrounded by friends. With letters cut from a magazine she spelled, “We miss you.”

Mike was extraordinarily friendly, Fowler said.

(more…)

[Crossposted from peacetiles.net] A few days ago my father introduced me to a mural process employed by the Canadian arts group NOA Productions, which has developed what they call “Mural Mosaics.”  They just completed their most recent project for the Town of Cochrane, which engaged nearly 200 area artists in the creation of as many individual paintings, each 12-inches square. When combined, these many paintings composed a single, coherent image – or “mosaic” – which was permanently installed at the Cochrane Ranch House in Alberta, formerly a center for the preservation of Canada’s Western culture.

In addition to the striking coherence of a “Moral Mosaic,” I was struck by the relatively few number of works needed to produce the mural – which is 12 tiles up by 18 tiles across (216).  In my experiments – and in most that I’ve seen online – upwards of 400 works of art – typically a photograph – have been needed to compose a single larger work – the primary reason being, as far as I can tell, that a great variety of color and density is needed to achieve a suitable “palette” – or range – that can be combined into an image.  I have written to NOA Productions to get more details about how they have approached this work, for example whether artists are asked to work within certain boundaries (eg limit their palette to certain colors).

This technique naturally got me thinking about the possibility of composing similar “mosaics” from the growing number of Peace Tiles being produced around the world.  I am thinking that there are at least two benefits to this kind of curatorial process…

Read the full article at peacetiles.net