Beautifying the School Environment through Collaboration
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Both educators participated in the 1996 Institute on French impressionism and returned to their respective California schools brimming with new ideas. Mohr prepared a unit on impressionism for her gifted third and fourth graders which had them talking and writing about impressionist pictures, while McGonagle introduced impressionist painting techniques into his fifth grade curriculum. Before long the two educators decided to collaborate on a mural at Mohr's school. The result was the transformation of an unsightly, storage-container wall into a picturesque garden scene, painted in a vibrant, impressionist palette. |
Teamwork,
and a mutual desire to beautify the school environment, led to a successful
student mural project planned and supervised by National Gallery of Art
Teacher Institute alumni Dennis McGonagle and Barbara Mohr.The container wall, which faced Mohr's classroom, had a corrugated metal surface measuring approximately ten by forty feet. All day long the sun bounced off its day-glow-orange surface, intensifying the offensive industrial color. As the solution to this eyesore took shape in her mind, Mohr consulted the school calendar, eagerly awaiting a holiday break that might allow McGonagle to visit Fullerton and guide her students in preparing and painting a mural.
Drawing inspiration from a calendar reproduction of a Claude Monet painting of his garden at Giverney, McGonagle transferred the French painter's composition to the storage-container wall using a grid in which one inch of the Monet painting was enlarged to one foot in the mural. Once the layout was finished, Mohr's students painted alongside McGonagle at forty minute intervals, eagerly employing the staccato brushstroke of the impressionists. The impressionist technique turned out to be a perfect choice for the corrugated wall, since the rippled surface enhanced the optical mixing of colors. Also, by painting with pure, undiluted colors, the young muralists gained first-hand experience with the laws of simultaneous contrast.
The act of painting the Monet-style mural put the capstone on all that Mohr's students had previously learned by looking at reproductions of impressionist paintings and discussing them in relation to what they had read about the French artists' goals and accomplishments.
The mural was completed in two days. Parent-volunteers later sprayed the painting with clear varnish to protect it from the weather. Now Mohr's students no longer have their eyes assaulted by a fluorescent orange corrugated metal wall, but instead enjoy a serene representation of Monet's garden at Giverney.
The project was so well received that McGonagle came back the following year to work with students on a larger mural depicting the history of Fullerton. Future collaborations may be just a matter of time.