On a warm November afternoon, Youth in Arts welcomed over 120 community members to participate in collaborative artworks at the West End Village Celebration in San Rafael. Artists of all ages created large-scale group paintings using primary colors – red, blue and yellow (plus white). Following the “Power of Sharing” lesson model from our visual art residency at Laurel Dell Elementary, we encouraged participants to share their colors and blend on the canvas to make any secondary colors.
The recent Public Safety Power Shut-off closed San Rafael City Schools for several days, so we felt it important to help community members, especially children, process their feelings through art. We presented the prompt: “Did you lose power in your neighborhood? How did it make you feel?” We then asked the artists to paint their response on the community murals. It was wonderful to see everyone working together to create something so beautiful.
In addition, community members who visited Youth in Arts’ booth responded to our prompt: “What makes your neighborhood powerful?” We asked participants to draw or write their response with Sharpie pen on colorful squares of hand-dyed watercolor paper, and later turned them into a community collage.
You can add to our collage, see the collaborative paintings, and more wonderful artwork from our 2nd grade residency at Laurel Dell Elementary in our current exhibition, Kids Imagine Our World: In My Neighborhood. The show will be on view in the YIA Gallery through December 6th!