Creating Downtown San Jose’s First Student Mural by Brigitte Heiser, Director of Communications Having Notre Dame student artwork displayed in the San Jose downtown area is not new for us. The Downtown Doors program, established in 2003, has featured the artistic creations of our students 29 times. In fact, this year, three new pieces of ND art were chosen for the program. Students have also had their artwork featured in exhibits and at special events. In 2015, however, Notre Dame’s contribution to art in the SoFA (South of First Arts) district reached new heights - literally! The San Jose Downtown Association (SJDA), a non-profit membership-based Rebecca Ternas ky organization founded in 1986, represents business and property owners and works to enhance downtown’s vitality and livability. In late 2014 they first contacted Rebecca Ternasky, chair for the Visual & Performing Arts Department and art teacher, about displaying student artwork on a large scale. Our unique urban location and the level of artistic talent in our student body made us a natural choice for this pilot program, an 8’ x 48’ mural. Unlike traditional murals painted on existing buildings or other structures, this mural would be painted onto wood panels to be installed on a freestanding frame structure on the corner of 2nd Street and San Carlos, right in the heart of the SoFA District. The finished mural will be a corner-style landscape design on a special frame that will house the artwork ten feet in the air! After being invited by the SJDA to produce this mural, Rebecca offered the opportunity to design the mural artwork to 16 ND artists. Among this group were students she had taught in Introduction to Visual Art and Advanced Pen and Paint — girls that had a strong art portfolio and would potentially go on to study the visual arts in college and beyond. From that small group, Jamie Friedman ’17 offered a great design that would fit nicely in the SoFA District. She worked hard to finish the artwork digitally during the months of January and February, 2015. While creating the original artwork required the creativity and focus of one student artist, translating that digital art into a 48’ mural required the time and talent of a great many more. In March, a core group of 30 students were chosen to accomplish this monumental task. The downtown association delivered the wood panels in April. After the panels had been primed, the students, under Rebecca’s direction, spent two weeks tracing the artwork image onto the panels. As school broke for summer and most students shifted into vacation mode, our core group of 30 students rotated through morning and evening shifts,
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