PORTFOLIO
STREET
ART IN THE CARIBBEAN Thursday, July 24, 2008
Last summer in the Dominican Republic, eight students broke through significant creative and cultural barriers, thanks to an actual wall. Four undergraduates from Parsons and four from Altos de Chavón, a sister school, spent two weeks learning the symbolic, collaborative, exuberant practice of street art under the guidance of Illustration faculty member Daniel Weise. The result was a public mural—163 feet long and 8 feet high—on a wall surrounding a convent and school. The finished mural demonstrates the hard skills the students picked up from the street artist’s trade—such as making big drippy brushes from shoe polish applicators and using cardboard stencils for repeating patterns and discovering the hardware store as art supply heaven—as well as the conceptual consensus and cooperative groove they developed as a team seeking to bridge language and other differences.
Day 9 & 10: Lots of progress has been made over the last 2 days and nothing has been able to stop us. Not even a torrential downpour that left the part of town we are painting in under water and all of our stencils soggy could stop us. http:// parsonsillustration.wordpress.com
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