The Mural Project: these walls and halls tell stories
by on Mar 9, 2018The walls of El Roble School sing with color, the canvas for multiple murals sponsored by the Mural Project and Art4Change.
Students in the school's fifth grade classes enroll in the after school program to create a mural on school walls. They select a theme, research two books, submit written reports, then move from writing to drawing.
Teaching them and managing the school mural project, Shile Cifuentes is a Gavilan and UCSC graduate. During her 10 years with the Mural Project, she has fine tuned the process.
"Often I hear, 'Oh, Shile did it,'" Cifuentes said. "But the students do all the creative work."
Students draw the designs, pick the colors, learn how to draw and paint, then paint the designs on the wall. They learn the process of how to do a mural along with the creative skills.
"I help pull their drawings and designs together that make sense, make understandable connections," she said. Then the students review the work, discuss it and decide.
At the beginning of class, students work on ideas in their sketchbooks, which will be
reviewed and incorporated into the overall mural.
The theme for 2018 is "Cultures of the Planet." Students answered three questions:
• Where do you come from?
• Where do your parents come from?
• Where do your grandparents come from?
From those questions, students discovered that one student speaks Italian with her grandmother. Another student knows three languages: English, Spanish and Tagalog. The students explored and sketched the cultural heritage of the countries: the flags, the dress, food, holidays, languages, continents, weather and dances.
Learning to work on a hard surface, students paint rocks that will later be placed near the
mural wall and become part of the installation.
As the local weather warms up, students move from the classroom to the outside, painting the designs they created on a designated wall. Throughout the school, murals have been painted on walls 9' x 20' feet up to 9' x 80'. El Roble School is one of many area schools displaying murals installed by the Mural Project.
Students share design and color ideas as they transfer their sketched designs onto painted rocks.
Cifuentes immigrated from Chile with her family when she was in high school. At one point she asked if they could move back. The language barrier was too steep. Surprisingly, her love of math helped even as she struggled with English. She discovered she could teach math to her classmates and could translate it from Spanish to English.
As challenging as her first experiences were, she is grateful for the opportunities. After high school she attended Gavilan and took art, photography and painting classes.
Art4Change founder and Gavilan College art instructor Arturo Rosette asked her, what about continuing college?
"As a mentor, he really pushed me," said Cifuentes. "My dream job was to be an art teacher, especially in after school programs." The doubts remained. "Gav was a dream. But what is next, who will want me, is this real?"
Working on all the murals and teaching the students created her work experience. Cifuentes was able to build and present her personal portfolio of work.
She applied to UC Davis, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and was accepted to all three. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2015 with a major in art and a minor in education.
"Once you have it, no one can take away your education," she said.
Flanked by sketchbooks, Cifuentes confers with a student about her finished work.
Through Rosette's Art4Change program, more than 30 murals have been installed in schools and public areas in Gilroy, Hollister and Morgan Hill. He began his work engaging art as a vehicle for healing with disenfranchised youth in Los Angeles more than 20 years ago. Recent installations include the Fourth Street underpass in Hollister and the Dreams project in collaboration with the San Benito County Arts Council and the Juvenile Hall Program.
Many of the murals were installed through Art 14, the Gavilan mural class. "Beyond the institutional metrics are others that can't be quantified, "said Rosette. "These are the intangible things students learn and take out to the community."
Cifuentes exemplifies this transformative learning experience as she looks to the next steps in wall preparation and transferring the art for the students to paint.
"As students go through this process," said Cifuentes, "they develop an eye for viewing other public art and murals. And they will want to return and view their work in the next five or ten years."
Shile Cifuentes and the El Roble mural class in front of last year's installation, "Underwater."