My residency at Brooklyn Junior High School was two weeks in length. The vision for the residency was to have the students create two large works of art which would be installed in the school. One was to go in the main office, and the other was imagined to go in the large stairway space. The school wanted to make the large empty stairway a more colorful place, incorporating different ethnic heritages, and wanted to brighten up the office with students' work as well. Working with the school staff, we came up with the idea to have the students make stained glass tables for the office. For the stairway, we started with an idea to make large silk banners, but changed the idea later on to making many small paintings on acrylic sheets, and then hanging them in a sculptural formation. This proved to be easier to work with in a large group, and is much more durable than silk. You can see the steps toward the finished products below.

We chose to depict animals for the imagery on the acrylic sheets. This was chosen because many countries and cultures have symbolism associated with certain animals, so the different cultures could be portrayed in this manner. We further subdivided the animals pertaining to earth, sky, and water. The following images are collages of some of the paintings that were created by the students.

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