Transcript

Location: Spence Elementary, Across the Universe Mural

As you’re facing the school building, turn around, and you will see our building mural. And on this panel is the beginning of the story of how people have interacted with and been guided by the stars throughout human history. It’s related to our school-wide culture-building. So every year we decide on a theme, and last year, the theme was outer space and reaching for the stars. And I felt it was time for us to create another artist-in-residence art piece because it’s always involves all the students. They get so much out of that experience. We usually do it in a Master-Apprentice model, so the students have a lot of input, but they’re also learning a lot from a Master Artist. I knew that I wanted to work with Mike Martino. We’ve worked together collaboratively many times in the past. He does a wonderful job of working with all age levels. The first lesson with Mike was actually where he just talked about how an artist begins a project like this, so the ideation and planning stage. Mike came back a couple weeks later; we were ready to paint. The kids had their constellation ideas developed, and we were able to start with the younger kids first doing a lot of the background painting. And then the next week, we were able to bring in the older students, and they added a lot of the details and the constellations. My name’s Ronna Metz, and I teach Elementary Art at Harry Spence Elementary School. And I’m here to talk about the Across the Universe mural project that we completed in May 2023.