Mural Class
Open to both seasoned and novice artists, this three-credit course has no pre-requisites and promises to enthrall students as they collaborate to create an on-campus mosaic mural.
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Upon successful completion of the course, students should be able to:
- Distinguish basic principles of artistic design including unity/variety, balance, radial and crystallographic, emphasis, rhythm, repetition, proportion-scale and figure ground relationship
- Manipulate the general elements of visual language including line, shape, volume, texture and space
- Manipulate properties of hue, value and chroma
- Identify and describe various aesthetic patterns due to historical events, geographical issues and sociopolitical patterns within the context of mural painting in both the modern and contemporary arena
- Produce a small to medium size mural design and a collaborative group mural utilizing various techniques for enlarging designs and drawings. Prepare the materials for the process of painting and or mural application
- Integrate critical thinking skills through completed artworks and participation in the formal critique process
About the Instructor
Lynn Blackwell Denton is a painter, installation and performance artist, ceramicist and filmmaker who investigates the nature of creativity and its sources.
In recent years Lynn has initiated collaborations with untrained artists and children to transform city environments. In 2001 and 2002, directing the first project of the Arts and Spirituality Center, she worked with recovering addicts and children in North Philadelphia to create their designs in a wall-sized mosaic and sculpture garden, Recovering World. Today the entire corner of 20th and Norris Streets has become an oasis of art, trees and flowers in a struggling neighborhood (pictured).
Lynn has orchestrated ten additional large-scale tile/mosaic projects in public places in Philadelphia, including the Susquehanna/Dauphin Subway Station, a SEPTA commission, for which she raised an additional $40,000, collaborating with 160 children from surrounding neighborhoods and installing special lighting.
In a 2006 project, sponsored by the Mural Arts Program and the Eagles Youth Fellowship, she invited 36 fourth grade students from Edward Heston School to design 6’x 9’ panels for the façade of the school, and with them installed over 12,000 mosaic pieces for a 65’ wall as well as planters and playground benches, the largest mosaic community collaboration ever completed in Philadelphia. The resulting environment has permanently transformed the block of 54th Street at Lancaster Avenue (pictured).
Other recent mosaic projects include the entrance to Fell School, at 9th Street and Oregon Avenue, composed of over 200 handmade bas relief tiles, and Dream Catcher, a mosaic collaboration with 6th grade students at Potter-Thomas School, 6th and Indiana Streets, completed in 2007. Both projects were sponsored by the Mural Arts Program and the Philadelphia Public Schools.
Previous Student Murals
Fall 2013
Spring 2013
Fall 2012
