Pirate Beach

Greetings from the Mirkwood Mural

We hope that your summer is going fantastic and everyone is keeping safe. The recent heat wave and other circumstances surrounding variants of the COVID 19 can be a strain on our mental health so as always take care of yourself and check on your loved ones whenever possible.

This summer the Mirkwood Mural partnered with Leaders of Tomorrow Youth Center to facilitate a mural workshop with youth in the summer program at Violetville Elementary/Middle School. For the entire month of July we met with the youth four days a week to design and create three unique murals to share with the community of Waverly. The youth from the program ranged from kindergarten to Fifth Grade, and we worked collaboratively among the classes through the steps that go into creating a large scale work of art.

The first mural to be featured is entitled “Waves”, this piece was completed collaboratively by the first and third graders from the LTYC summer workshop. The first half of the mural shows the image of a pirate ship taking sail with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion in the background. This piece is a composite of several drawings the youth in the first grade class made du ring the sketching and design phase of the mural making process. After we collectively reviewed the sketches, we agreed that it would be more intriguing to collage images from google to better reflect elements featured in the sketches. Youth traced images onto the background and we painted in a prior class and took turns to carefully paint the final piece. After the summer program was over Brandon Buckson, who facilitated the workshops in the classroom, went over the youths' work and refined some of the lines and final painting.

The second half of our mural was designed and painted by youth in the third grade group of the LTYC Summerville workshop. This half of the mural shows a peaceful beach scene featuring several people, a tree, and a panda. One of the notable images is a woman who has taken flight in superhero costume and a golden crown. The youth in the third grade class worked in groups to design drawings that we collaged and created one single composition. Each student had the opportunity to trace the projection of their design and carefully trace the images as our stencil. It was a lot of fun to paint with the youth and show them different techniques as we painted and completed our mural.

In the coming weeks we will feature two additional murals completed during the Leaders of Tomorrow Youth Center mural making summer workshop.

For more information on LTYC you can check out their website here https://ltyc.net.