ANYONE WHO HAS EVER painted a living room knows it’s inevitable. No matter how careful the painter, eventually a run, a drip, or an errant brush stroke leaves paint where it’s not meant to be. That’s bad enough when working with one color in a private living room, but try working with multiple colors on a mural that 30,000 people pass each day—like along the walls of Pittsburgh’s Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway.
Ashley Hodder, education director for the National City Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway Community Mural Project, has worked on several high-profile murals around Pittsburgh in the past two years, and she has a simple answer for the moment when the acrylic paint doesn’t land exactly where it’s supposed to go.
“Wipe it off and try again,” says Hodder, who earned her certification in art education from Carlow University in 2002. “It’s only paint.”
While that answer might suffice for the 20 or so artists and teachers who contributed their talents and experience to make the murals a reality during the summer of 2007, the more than 70 teen and pre-teen youth artists who worked on the murals took away more than lessons about paint.
Hodder, whose job as education director included recruiting students from high schools near the busway to work on the murals, came to understand just how important this project was to her charges. At various times during the summer, 12 different murals were being worked at once. Students were hired for one of two cycles during the project, which began in June and ended in September.
“For many of the students this was their first job,” she says. “So we wanted to have as many students get a chance to work as possible.”
One of those students hired for the first cycle called Hodder every day for several weeks into the second cycle, just in case someone had dropped out and he could take their place.
“This was about more than the money he earned. He told me, ‘Listen, I just want to be around something positive.’” And then, as if to emphasize the enormity of that statement, Hodder added quietly, “That’s not something most teenagers say.”
That comment affected her more because the teen calling her was shot this summer—an innocent bystander in a neighborhood where that term has come to mean little when the bullets start flying. It’s a violent culture that touches even the ones without the guns in their hands.
“Trying to get kids from different neighborhoods to work together created a little friction in the beginning,” says Hodder, who recruited teens from nine high schools, including Westinghouse, Schenley, Peabody, and CAPA (the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts), high schools in the Pittsburgh Public School System, as well as Wilkinsburg and Woodland Hills high schools in the suburbs. “They would say to me, ‘We don’t mess with people from that neighborhood.’ So it was a challenge at first.”
Challenges are nothing new for Hodder. “I’ve worked in alternative education since I graduated from Carlow,” she says. She has taught for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s alternative education program— from shelter schools to Shuman Center—and currently teaches adults at the Allegheny County Jail, as well as carrying out art therapy at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
The mural project was Kyle Holbrook’s idea, the executive director of the mural project and founder and owner of KH Designs. He has worked on numerous murals throughout Pennsylvania, including last year’s Pittsburgh All-Star Communities Mural on the Warhol Bridge. Holbrook told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the project is as much about building community as creating art. “We’re into beautifying places,” he was quoted, “but more important is what we can do socially for these neighborhoods.”
There is no question that community is important for the project, as each mural revolves around a theme of respect—respect for individuals in the neighborhoods, respect for local history, and respect for each other. To build that last point, the murals also emphasize the importance of teamwork. Each site had two professional artists and an art teacher to direct the students’ efforts.
In addition to Hodder, three of the artists involved in the project have Carlow ties. Kristin DeGiovanni earned her bachelor’s in art education at Carlow in 2004, and is currently working towards her master’s degree. Nicholas Hohman earned his bachelor’s degree from Carlow in 2007, and Jeffrey Katrencik earned his certification in art education from Carlow in 1997. Hodder credits Jill Weiss, a student teaching advisor at Carlow, as well as the art teacher at the Campus School of Carlow University, with being instrumental in leading her to a number of artists/art teachers for the project.
“What impresses me about these graduates is that they are attracted to working with students coming from backgrounds different than theirs—that they want to make a difference in students’ lives, especially of those whose lives are in need of positive role models,” says Weiss, who was an advisor to DeGiovanni, Hodder, and Hohman. “They are not only satisfied to teach art in the classroom, but are driven to meet the challenge of sharing, with their students, the transforming nature of art.”
Transforming lives is important, but that isn’t a guarantee that the murals would look as spectacular as they do. Even with artists and teachers involved, it seems that mixing teens with paint and a blank wall could produce more chaos than art. DeGiovanni says everything went fairly smoothly, though.
“Each teacher got to do his or her own thing,” she said. “How you approached [your section of the mural] was 100 percent up to you, but it was definitely something the kids could do well with the teachers’ help.”
Pittsburgh artist Magail Sahara working on his section of the mural—titled “Peace Over Pittsburgh”—on Homewood Avenue.
“I learned along with the students,” says Hohman, who was working on his first mural project. “Together, we developed familiarity with the process and the scale. We learned how the concrete blocks react to brush and paint.”
Students were paired into groups of two: painters—those who could apply the color well—and drawers—those who could sketch the shapes to be painted. But even an approach that practical met with some resistance.
“At first, the students would split up by races,” DeGiovanni says. “The African American kids were on one side of the street and the white kids on the other, but we switched groups around every day, and before long friendships began to form. On the last day, they were exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses so they could stay in touch. It was nice to see.”
“It was really interesting to see how they developed,” says Hohman, who was referring to both artistic and social development. “People would walk by and I’d say ‘Hi’ and the students would say to me ‘You’re too friendly Mr. Nick.’ But before the time was up, they were saying ‘Hi’ to people on the street, too.”
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