sesame street in the bronx

Saturday, October 20 was the big mural painting day! As part of the annual NYCares Volunteer Day, hundreds of volunteers take to the schools and parks in the 5 boroughs to clean, paint, garden and just improve the spaces overall. I decided to volunteer my artistic skills to mural painting, and I recruited Anna to help out too. So, Saturday morning - bright and early - Anna and I hopped on a 6 train toward Pelham Bay Park, and settled in for the long ride deep into the Bronx to PS 47x, an elementary school where we would be sketching out the mural for volunteers to paint.




I had already met with Tom & Steve a week earlier, the Principal and Asst Principal, and visited the school to get a sense of what they wanted done. I knew they had already started a Sesame Street mural on the back wall of the school, and wanted to add 2 new characters this year, as well as pull the mural together with a sky, clouds, etc. Tom, the Principal, was this energetic, young-ish guy who actually used to be an Art Director at Print magazine for 6 years until he burned out and left the industry to be an art teacher -- and eventually become the principal of PS 47x. The entire school was filled with fun, cheery characters and wall paintings, and it made me want to contribute even more to the overall creative feel of the school.




So this is how the day unfolded. First, Anna and I scoped out graffiti-tagged spaces on the wall where we would add the new characters, Kermit the Frog and Zoe (note: Zoe is apparently a relative newcomer to the Sesame Street 'hood.)




Then we drew the lifesize characters onto the wall using black charcoal. We also added big, playful clouds and blades of grass to the entire stretch of wall.

Here is Anna's Kermit:


and my Zoe:


By 9:30 AM, the playground was mobbed with ready volunteers, anxious to get painting. They staked out territories where they would paint, and it was actually pretty cool that we were "The Artists" that everyone came to with questions. Anna and I both suffered a little bit of "art director's angst" - where you worry that what you draw will not be accurately re-created by others, but hey, it's a mural, and a community effort, and you have to let go. We jumped in where there were gaps in painters, we re-drew some guidelines where necessary, and directed people overall. We also overheard some people complaining about our designs -- and how the grass was too long, or the clouds were too low... tough critics! But it just goes to show that you can't please everyone.







Ta da! The finished results, by 3 PM Saturday afternoon:








All in all, it was an incredibly rewarding day, and an amazing experience for me. I actually helped create an entire mural in a school in the Bronx! And I'd like to think that that made a little bit of a difference out there.