I'm also preparing for a mural at KIPP a charter school here in Philadelphia that I've volunteered to do when I'm finished with the hospital gig. I confess I had difficulty coming up with a concept for this one until I saw these wonderful photos by Dan Heller.....they became my inspiration.
The ladies in charge that I met with wanted to use the analogy of the children climbing a mountain to success, and when I saw these photos I took a deep sigh of relief. At first all I could imagine was painting all......these.......children, and how long that would take, but now doing the mural in silhouette will really speed the process up.
Another point that the ladies wanted to emphasize was how important it is that we (as people in general) work together and help each other. So my plan is to photograph students helping each other do things, like pulling or pushing each other up the mountain, handing someone something they dropped, helping someone tie a shoe, helping someone carry something heavy....things like that............then turn the photos into silhouettes. I'll either project the images or do tracings and transfer, depending on what the width of the hallway will allow me to do. I also suggested that if they wanted it to be more colorful that decorative designs could be painted on the 'clothes' the silhouettes would be wearing.
One final issue they wanted to address was the hanging of plaques honoring people who have made contributions to the school. They want to place them in ascending heights based on the value(?) of the contributions made, and wondered if I could make the mountain steep enough. So I suggested adding some hot air balloon silhouettes to the mural for additional height (to hang the plaques on), or maybe they could be attached to path markers going up the mountain? I think this is going to be a really fun project.....very different from what I usually do....I'm looking forward to it.
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