We Are One Mural

We are One Mural at Gregory

This fall students in my Painting I course at Cape Fear Community College completed a public art project at the International School at Gregory. The group project was due to education outreach efforts by the North Carolina Museum of Art for the show “Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism”. Financial support for the project was on behalf of the International School at Gregory PTA. Students participated in a workshop with NCMA resident artist Peter Marin at CFCC. Marin taught the history of Mexican mural making as well as how to conceptualize an idea and scaling a mural to size. Many from the class travelled to the museum in Raleigh to take part in College Night, an annual event held in November. Hundreds of college students from across the state enjoyed Latinex music, dancing, food, and art making, as well as a tour of the show all hosted by fellow college students. For the mural project students used knowledge they acquired in the NCMA mural making workshop to create a public art piece at the International School at Gregory. The magnet school in downtown Wilmington focuses on Spanish language immersion for K-8 with a Mandarin option for middle school students. The NCMA provided a template of a butterfly based on a mural design by Cornelio Campos executed on the exterior of the Durham Convention Center. The students used the butterfly to symbolize migration and the earth to symbolize global learning. A secondary component of the design was the name of the school written in English, Spanish, and Mandarin with the words “We Are One”. The butterflies are scaled and positioned to allow children and adults to stand in front of the wings to take a picture and post to social media with the hashtag #artnaturepeople. Shared images will post to the NCMA website as well as the institution’s social media sites. CFCC students felt pride when hearing the positive reactions from the Gregory school community as well as a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when standing back and looking at what they helped to create. One student commented “Someday I can bring my children here to see this.”