THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511090148
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Dare County kids are exploring their Southern roots with the help of the famous muralist John Biggers.
In conjunction with a traveling 50-year retrospect of Biggers' work currently on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, Manteo High School and Hatteras School students are composing murals inspired by his use of cultural symbolism.
One mural per school is being painted as part of an outreach program sponsored by the museum. The murals will be sent to Raleigh in the spring, where the state museum will alternate showing the student work over the course of a year.
Seventeen North Carolina schools were chosen to participate in the program. The goal: putting youth in touch with their cultural and community roots and helping them to experience the mural process.
Amanda Durant, outreach assistant with the North Carolina Museum of Art, has been working with MHS art teacher Robin York and Hatteras art teacher Marta Langowski.
``We wanted each school to concentrate on their county, their county's history, their place as members of that society,'' Durant said. ``Each is doing its own mural based on some of the same ideas Biggers uses, his symbols: family, nature, cosmos, folklore, concepts of origins - his, of man, of African American people. I've never seen someone who is so perfect as an educational resource.''
The project is an interdisciplinary one.
Julie Osmon's MHS English class is studying African literature, so they helped create personal symbols that represented the Dare community.
Some of these will be used in the mural. The students had the advantage of viewing a slide show on Biggers that was put together by the art museum.
The timing of the project is exciting, for Biggers has recently returned to the place of his birth, Gastonia, N.C., after a 36-year stint as founding chairman of the Texas Southern University art department.
The 71-year-old is heralded as one of the greatest African American painters of our time.
Students participating in the mural project have already studied his, which is filled with reverent themes. Rich, masterfully rendered people and symbols representing childhood in the South, the strength of women in the family and a spiritual love for animals are present.
He displays a passion for fabric and especially quilts with the repetition of patterns on his canvases. He is also exhibiting drawings and terra cotta sculptures.
Biggers opened the North Carolina leg of his retrospect last Saturday, and about a dozen Dare County students and faculty attended the ceremonies. The show is a great educational tool, for students can see how Biggers has progressed as an artist and a man by studying 50 years of his work.
When the group returned from Raleigh, the Manteo students began drawing their sketch on the mural canvases. Twenty advanced art students will work on the painting. With four students per day drawing and painting, York believes the project will be complete by mid-December.
Already the white canvas is outlined fully. The Manteo kids have drawn their heritage in the form of a lighthouse, the Elizabeth II, Lost Colony figures, an old church representing freedom of religion, a youth on a pier, a flag, waves, wildlife, sand dunes and the Wright Memorial. The subtler, Biggersinspired symbols include water bubbles, diamond patterns and turtles.
``In all of Biggers' works, any water animal stands for rejuvenation,'' said York.
In the compartments where the turtles are placed, each student will apply his or her fingerprints and signature, ``so that every student that was involved, even if it was a little tiny bit, has ownership of it,'' York said.
Art is a beautiful way to learn about culture, the history of Dare County, oneself. The very threads and themes that weave through the work of John Biggers - spirituality, family, struggle, identity - weave through the lives of us all.
Thanks to John Biggers and the folks at the North Carolina Museum of Art, we have a poetic opportunity to reach within to identify that which connects us all. MEMO: Mary Ellen Riddle covers Outer Banks arts for The Carolina Coast. Send
comments and questions to her at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head, N.C. 27959. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
Sara Hole, left, and Emily Green put the finishing touches on a
mural at Manteo High School.
by CNB