“Going Back to Our Roots” is an interactive mural on the first floor of the Learning Commons on campus. This mural revolves around who we are as people and how important inclusivity and diversity is on campus. The idea is that you should take a moment to recognize and look within yourself and after doing so you should try to think of one word that sums up who you are as a person. Then write the word down and leave it for the artists to add to the mural throughout the semester.
The artists are third year art therapy students; Emily Evans, Alexandria Kolar, Mallory Lang, Victoria Meono, Brandon DeManicor, and Krista Perdomo. Being apart of this project has been an important aspect to me. While brainstorming for this project, we wanted to really show the importance of the viewers’ voices, wanting to hear directly from them. Therefore we first came up with the idea that we wanted to have a woman sitting on a hill with her hands touching the ground, showing how she is still in touch with her roots. Asking art therapy students from all years to give us their word, we put those in the hair of our figure. We then decided we wanted to have a drop box so the Marywood community could give us their word, which we will be adding throughout the semester.
“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.” – Malcom Forbes
Our goal for the mural is to have the viewers look inward and share who they are. We want to highlight the uniqueness and acknowledge our differences, making them into art. We chose the Learning Commons because it is the center of campus, everyone will see this display and hopefully recognize each others’ differences. We also wanted to display Marywood’s core values, emphasizing respect and empowerment throughout our campus.
This mural will be up until December 7th, 2022. Please feel free to take one minute and visit the Learning Commons to support the third year art therapy majors as well as to contribute to the Marywood community. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to any of us via our emails below.
Emily Evans: erevans@m.marywood.edu
Alexandria Kolar: amkolar@m.marywood.edu
Mallory Lang: mblang@m.marywood.edu
Victoria Meono: vimeono@m.marywood.edu
Brandon DeManicor: bfdemanincor@m.marywood.edu
Krista Perdomo: knperdomo@alexandramevans
Thank you guys for reading! Till Next time!