With the local art scene as fun and vibrant as ever, art students from Augusta University worked together to create murals on the walls of Copeland Elementary and Belair K-8 School.
A cohort of 10 students in AU’s mural art class were to paint three large pieces of art that would aim to reinvigorate children when they came back for the Fall 2023 semester.
In addition to teaching students how to paint large murals, Cyndy Epps, a lecturer in the university’s Department of Art and Design and the class instructor, said she taught her class the history of murals and how to compare good and bad design choices, in preparation for appeasing a future client.
“We partnered with the principals of each of the schools that we worked with,” she said. “I decided to offer the class, because it was a great way to provide a hands-on experience for the students to learn about grant writing and creating proposals for murals.”
By equipping her early career artistic pupils with a working knowledge on how to create murals, Epps said she felt very confident in the students’ abilities to meet a client’s wants and expectations.
“The students had a lot of broad opportunities for creativity. At Copeland, we knew we were doing the boys’ and girls’ bathroom, and the principal just wanted some kind of positive message in each of those,” she said. “So, we were able to have a lot of creativity on that.”
In Belair K-8, Epps said the principal requested a theme that reinforced the school’s behavioral plan. This was translated into a mural containing swords and acronyms.
“It stood for ‘self-control, on task, on time, accepting others and respecting others,’ so those were our parameters, and it was up to us how we wanted to communicate that,” she said. “With that, my students learned that they had to take in consideration who the audience is and what colors were already in the spaces.”
With very “dull green,” tiled and narrow walls in schools, Epps said her artists were challenged to make the mural still fit in with the already existing atmosphere.
“It pushed them even further because we had to figure out how to still make it creative and fun,” she said. “I’ve always found painting murals to be really rewarding, so to be able to share that with students in my class is really beautiful.”
Painting three large murals in just under a month, Epps said she was thrilled with the results and was extremely grateful to partner with other educational institutions to increase her students’ learning and exposure to new artistic skill sets.
“We had an idea for what the principals were looking for and so we collaborated, and they all did sketches and designs. Then we came back and we worked together to modify those designs,” she said.
After having finalized mural drafts, Epps said students had three days to enter into schools and execute their paintings as a team.
“We went in with a plan and everybody was assigned a task,” she said. “One of the cool things with this too when we were painting is, because we did it in the summer, there were no students there yet, but the teachers were starting to come back, and students got to see their reactions to the work.”
Epps said experiencing audience feedback was extremely rewarding for the students, because it showed them the importance of their art.
“They saw that we’re making this environment look cool, but we’re also changing this environment for the teachers, staff and the children in these schools,” she said. “I think having that rewarding experience was just as valuable … that was exciting for me.”
From the entire process, Epps said she hopes students left her class feeling self-assured in their artistic abilities and the impact their creations can have on others in their community.
“My students are now equipped to be able to have the confidence that they can go on and have the skills to engage in something like this again,” she said. “Collaborating with others is huge, and it was a great opportunity that benefitted everybody.”
To learn more about AU’s art program, please visit: https://www.augusta.edu/programs/fine-art-ba.php
