Sunday, May 6, 2012

Birchwood Elementary School 2012



From April the 23rd to the 27th, 2012 I worked on a mural project at Birchwood Elementary School in St-Lazare, Quebec.

It was a five day project and we had close to three hundred participants. Working in collaboration with art teacher Erin Wainwright made all of this possible. As well, we had the help of very motivated teachers and parents. Even the Principal, Mme. C ,took part in it, painting the leaves of the birch tree in one of the panels.

The theme of the project was “The Four Seasons” and the students really impressed me with their sketches, depicting events and activities that took place in each of them.

We created a series of squares for the students to place their drawings and above them all, one can see scenes containing elements of the four seasons.

On each of these panels stands the birch tree with different colour leaves for each season.

Given the difficulty to obtain permission from all the participants to be filmed, I approached the teachers and parents and suggested that I could make a video with them painting and dancing instead. They agreed to the idea and the result is what you can see on this video.

I was very touched by their enthusiasm. In spite of their tight schedule they were able to spare me some time at the end of their busy day to paint, dance and celebrate the creation of the mural.

I realized the four seasons drawings were a perfect metaphor to evoke “Just a day out of life"” as stated in the lyrics of Holiday, the song by Madonna, chosen to highlight this beautiful art piece.

I’m very proud of this mural and very thankful to Birchwood Elementary for inviting me to do this project.

Bravo to all these wonderful artists!!!!

Marcio Melo

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