Murals
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All of these murals were done during working hours in a school with
approximately 65 children on the premises.
Project 1, Preschool Diaper Changing Bathroom
I did this bathroom with the idea that the little ones could
look up and all around..on all four walls, and always spot
something new or familiar to look at. Above the scene is a child's
perspective of outerspace, and below, as we travel around the four
walls, we go from ocean to prairie to city to lake to snow to
mountain to jungle to desert. Starting with the first picure, we are
standing in the middle of the room looking over the entry doorway, and
then turning in a slow circle from wall to wall, until the sun ends the
fourth wall.
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Project 2, Preschool Bathroom 2
This mural is in a bathroom right next to the first one. The older
preschoolers tended to use this one, and I thought that using familiar
nursery rhyme characters would provide an opportunity for pre-reading
while children in this large school waited for potty turns, or sat.
I wanted the characters to look as much like typical storybook characters
as possible, but also wanted to have characters that represented all of
our families, which were multi-cultural. Again, the first picture starts
at the entrance wall, and the last one is the fourth wall.
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The Drama Room
This castle was built for use in a Christmas pageant put on by the preschool.
It stood in the middle of my living room while I painted step by step. It
really was the beginning of my muraling hobby. I started just painting it
but decided to add a bit of interest with the rocks, and then some depth.
After the pageant, we didn't want to store the castle away for the entire
year, so we stood it next to the walls in a quiet corner, adding some
books and pillows. This became the favorite place to cry, sleep, and hide
.
It never was used in another pageant. The murals on the walls here were
done by a young co-worker that wanted to try her hand at it a few years after
the castle was there.
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The Drama Room
This room was my own..and I designed it according to how I wanted the
environment to feel as the children in my group were coloring, listening
eating and socializing. It's hard to make an institutional setting feel
homey. This room was stark and cold feeling, and had an echo.
While looking through lots of children's book's, I noticed the whimsical
quality of the homes and furnishings within them of the characters
and decided to bring them to life.
I ended up with bigger than life strawberries, flowers and teddy bears
on the walls. I also noticed that the illustrators make every single
element in the room a feast for the eyes...nothing in them is there with-
out stirring up rich vocabulary, conversation and visual interest, often
with each item having a tale of it's own, outside the story.
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The Goodbye Window
This window faced the parking lot. Children would stand there and smile,
cry, receive comfort in the rocking chairs nearby, and then go their way.
At the other end of the day, they seemed to have an inner clock that told
them precisely when to start watching out the window. One by one, little
ones would end up there, some playing quietly on the rug, some rocking
with blankies in our child-size rockers, and some with long faces, just
staring. I didnt have much wall to paint on, but decided that the window
should be special. I painted vines going over the windows, and before
long had added the birdhouse and apples. Before I was done, the entire room
had 'grass' around the baseboards, with ants and other insects here and
there..and onto the supply shelves. Eventually every cabinet and shelf
was painted with a somewhat..'backyard' theme. A bucket strewn in tall
grass with an old tennis shoe...a dropped lollipop with ants on it. The
children would lay on their tummies and follow the ants along the baseboards,
or trace the 'buzzline' of a spiriling bee in the air. Some would fall
asleep, and some would talk outloud, telling their own stories.
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The Naproom
This room is long and cavernous. The ceilings were about 10 ft high. When
we'd put those tiny children to sleep in there, they seemed to disappear,
and the room was stark and unwelcoming. What could the children look at
while laying there on their backs...the lavender ceiling? I decided to
give them the ocean..and all that it holds, waves crashing above them
with surfing dolphins jumping over them. Baby Baluga rises high..onto the
ceiling to watch over them as they sleep. In a dark cave..too dark to show,
they can catch a glimpse of a mossy treasure chest, with jewels and coins
dripping out of them. An octopus looks out over the flannel storyboard,
and ocean creatures are simply everywhere, from mammals to fish to
crustaceans, eels and urchins to manowars and seahorses. Then at the other
end, children romp on the shore and collect the seashells the waves toss
at their feet. Seagulls rest on old dock posts, and sailboats journey on
to lands unknown. This mural starts at the first pic with the dolphins, and
and ends about 40 feet away on the next corner with the seashore, not
yet shown here.
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