NBA Cares Murals at TJ Rusk Middle School

This is one of the drawings for one of four murals I'm designing for our school. We've been unbelievably fortunate to be chosen as beneficiaries of the remarkable NBA Cares program, and their volunteers will assist in the completion of the murals. As events (and murals) shape up I will update this post and move it back to the top of the queue.

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While the majority of comments from faculty about the mural have been positive, I wish to point out a few things to address some of the negative comments. Yes, the rams are the students' designs. This deals with a couple of key challenges; generating a lot of meaningful content quickly, and giving the school (which is largely composed of students, lest we forget) a sense of ownership. And yes, some of them are funny looking. I think it's charming. At first I was letting some of the students draw out their rams, but the results were too inconsistent. Placement and size were off, and the line quality was too varied. As you can see in the photo directly above, all of the student drawn rams have been edited out.

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These are the final drawings for the murals in the new wing. Can you find which circle has the misfit? Every community has at least on person who feels out of place, but who is nonetheless connected to everyone else.

These are our fighting rams for the cafeteria, I'm not sure what else, if anything, I should add to this one. If anyone has a suggestion i'd be happy to hear it. For example, we have Mr. Ruiz to thank for the second ram on the right.

Out in the courtyard off the blacktop we're painting a Dymaxion Map of the globe. I made a deliberately weird choice for this location. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map, this being the most popular, but not the final version, is a projection of the world onto a regular icosahedron, which is then unfolded in a way that emphasizes the connectedness of the continents with the added bonus of showing them with minimal distortion. As opposed to a cylindrical or Mercator projection, both of which misrepresent the proportions of our globe, distorting the northern hemisphere to such an extent that Greenland is almost as large as South America, the Dymaxion map shows things in roughly the correct proportions, with distortion moving from the center to the edge of each triangle. This map is a more accurate representation of the actual geography, and makes for a fine teaching tool when it comes to discussing geometric solids.

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Well, Wednesday has come and gone. It was remarkably busy, remarkably productive, and we are grateful beyond measure. I spent so much time running from mural to mural, answering questions and mixing paint, that I'm not entirely clear what else happened. Lots of painting, that's for sure. Possibly more than the volunteers bargained for. Some work remains to be done on the Community of Rams murals in the new wing, paint that lifted from the Dymaxion Map after the torrential rain that fell in the afternoon needs to be replaced, the fighting rams in the cafeteria need some touching up, and the ram on the front porch needs to be repainted where someone's parent stepped on it. My advanced art class and I will have our work cut out for us next week.

What follows are photos from the event in roughly chronological order. Again, many thanks to NBA Cares and the BBVA Compass volunteers, and it needs to be said that the NBA Cares organizers are genuine champions. It never would have run as smoothly (or happened at all!) without their hard work and organization.

Preparatory drawing for the ram on the porch.

Finished edges for the Dymaxion Map. This took up most of my morning.

Source material for the upstairs mural.

NBA Cares organizers prepping for the first paint stroke ceremony/photo-op.

Opening ceremony.

BBVA Compass volunteers.

:)

These rams went up fast. I may have helped that happen.

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 The following were taken by Janice Heman. Proof I was there.