Mural Project Completed!

When I took this One-Year Appointment to teach art at TMCC in Reno, I was asked if I could paint and teach a mural project that had been proposed, the first ever at TMCC.  I have experience painting murals from years ago, so I was excited to take it on.  The theme as proposed was to create a "Nevadan Landscape", and my original four students worked together to interpret what that could mean.  See this post!  Through numerous studies we came up with a final composition that our President and her cabinet approved.  Over the next 3 months, the original students, a handful of local volunteer artists, and I executed this massive mural.  It was a wonderful collaborative effort.



Here are the finished photographs of this 45' long X 12' high artwork, permanently on display in TMCC's Student Center.  In the process, I learned so much about this place!  The mural is a cultural and physical timeline of the surrounding area, starting at far left with the native legend of the Stone Mother at Pyramid Lake at dawn.  The viewer then progresses through day and several state plants and animals, including a Bristle Cone Pine, Big Horn Sheep, Wild Horses and others.  We also have a representation of the Black Rock Desert and the coyote as the symbol of the native fire bearer and the modern day Burning Man Art Festival.  Through the main body of the mural we have landscapes and cultural elements depicting the Truckee Meadows area around the college, including a view of downtown Reno from the hill that TMCC sits on.  Here we included past, contemporary and futuristic elements, from the 19th-century train referencing the trans-continental line running through here and a more futuristic image of a quickly growing and changing Reno.  Reno is best seen at night from the hill, so we transitioned into night and ascended up into the Sierra Nevada mountains and a moonlit sky at upper right.  We finished the lower right and the visual end of our mural with ancient petroglyphs found further south in Nevada, and this allowed for a creative signing ceremony.  We dipped our hands in paint and left our stamps like some of the old cave painting artists.  There is so much more rich conceptual detail if one studies the numerous smaller elements we worked in. 

Already the mural is making a noticeable impact.  Gallery attendance is up as the formerly dark corner of the large student center is visually ignited and many students notice the area for the first time.  Staff and visitors constantly tell me how much we have captured the character of Truckee Meadows and the surrounding area.  It seems to be well-liked by everyone I have talked to, and is a source of pride around the college.  I am so proud of my students and this project, and am grateful to have the chance to develop and teach this incredibly unique class!

The Synergy of Art and Music

Also in my first semester at TMCC, I have brought my live quartet project in for my Life Drawing class here!  I reached out to the community and found a well-respected symphony quartet, The String Beings.  They were very excited to perform for us.  We happen to have a great area to do this in- the main hall of the Student Center right in front of our in-progress mural!  As expected, it was a huge event, with students and faculty crowding around to take the event in.  Several even tried their hands at drawing with the tables and art supplies we provided.

My interview post-event.

Mural Class!

I haven't had any time to post since I took this full time job out in Reno at Truckee Meadows Community College, but I'd like to update a bit of what has been happening.  When I took the job, they needed someone to take over the mural grant they had just won.  The grant called for a mural artist to teach a class, developing the mural from concept to finish.  I have mural painting experience from years ago, and have made some pretty big drawings recently, so it was a class I felt confident I could teach!  The site is in the main hall of the Student Center, sized 12 feet high X 45 feet long, in a heavy traffic area.  It is also the wall where the main campus art gallery is, as the grant writers wanted to emphasize its entrance and draw attention to it.

The first task with my 4 students was to brainstorm compositional elements.  The theme as the grant was written was to create a Nevadan Landscape.  I taught the students about the early stages of mural planning and development, and they taught me about the amazing and inspiring local landscape.  After bringing together numerous photographs, research, sketches and paintings of various elements, we built four of these mock-ups.  They are built to scale, based off of building blueprints and we drew and painted directly on them.  This is a way to easily plan the composition of such a huge project, as well as develop color structures, and deal with architectural elements that we had to work around.

The President of the College, who in the grant was to help dictate what the mural would have and would ultimately make the final choice, asked us for three compositions to choose from.  Instead of assigning a mock-up to each student, I had the students work collaboratively on developing them.  I did this so that as student's strengths and interests revealed themselves, I knew which ones I could assign major parts to as we went through these into the main execution.  I told students that this is where some of the most important work lied, as once the composition was set in form and imagination, it would make it easier to tackle the main mural.  We took our three best to meet with the President and her cabinet for final approval.  After a brief introduction I let the students do the presenting.  President Hilgersom and her staff absolutely loved what we had developed, and we took notes as they combined elements of the different ones they liked best.  With that, we were approved!

We were underway!  We took our compositional plans and applied them directly to the walls.  The students were surprised at how fast it started out!

 












We worked until the end of the semester developing the major compositional elements.  I taught mural painting techniques as we went, and have helped quite a bit with the painting.  Now in the the Spring semester of 2018, we will continue work, hopefully making our plan for a big reveal with a formal lighting in late March!