Mural Unveiling

Today marked the unveiling for the mural. We would like to thank everyone who helped out over these past few months, and all who came to see the unveiling. There was an amazing turn out today. People from all over the city came to visit and check out the mural.

There was a ribbon cutting ceremony after staff members of the Folwell School and lead muralist Greta McLain spoke to the community. Today was a fantastic day for our project and it is sad to see that it is over, but now we all have this amazing mural to remember it by.

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Creation of the Connections Mural

Now that the unveiling is almost here, we’ve been reflecting on the process of creating the Connections Mural. We had our first community input session at Corcoran Park’s community soup potluck back in November. At this event members of the community were asked to give their input on the designs. One sheet allowed them to write what they thought would be nice to see, and another had space to draw what they thought parts of the mural should look like.  There were also two more events in December!

Later in January and February, students at Folwell were also given these sheets and asked for their input. Many of the kids depicted on the mural are current Folwell students. After gathering their ideas, our muralist Greta McLain took all the suggestions and combined them into one complete design that she submitted to a panel consisting of Dr. Salazar, Clyde Kane (district faculties), Bob Kambeitz from SENA, Molly McCartney, Gabrielle Bliss, and Alex Berry.

After it was approved, there were seven community paint parties all over Minneapolis. You can read all about those in other recent posts. In a grand culmination of the hard work of the artists and their supporters, the mural is being installed onto Folwell School. Thank you to everyone for being a part of this project, and we hope to see everyone at Folwell School on August 20th at 4:00pm for the unveiling!

Unveiling Announcement

This weekend, I got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness our talented artists’ installation of the mural on Folwell School in Minneapolis. It was exciting to see the beginning of the culmination of everyone’s hard work on such a community-focused project.

The installation of the mural is going quicker than expected, and everything is ahead of schedule. It won’t be much longer before it’s up on the wall and finished. We invite all to celebrate in the official unveiling, which we are now excited to announce will be on Thursday August 20th at 4pm at Folwell School. We hope to see you there!

Studio Visit

Today I got a chance to go in and see the mural  being worked on in studio. Now that all of the community paint party events have taken place, the rest of it is up to our muralist Greta and her very capable team. They were getting some great work done while I was there, using an interesting process. First, they project an image of a piece of the mural onto a sheet of canvas. Once the image is projected onto the canvas, the artists trace guide lines that will help them paint the image onto the mural. Next, interns work on the under coating, which is the base layer of paint. After the under coating is complete, the canvas goes to Greta and her assistants, who paint layers on top of the base coat and add fine details to the mural.

Make sure to keep checking back in to see more of the work in progress. And don’t forget: the unveiling is coming up and you won’t want to miss it! When the date and time is announced, we’ll post details about the unveiling here, so stay tuned.

Sibley Park Event, June 18th

It was an absolutely gorgeous day to have our last mural event. We had a great turn out for the mural today. People from all over the neighborhood came to help out and we greatly appreciated them. It also happened to be Sibley Park’s ice cream social, so there was plenty of food and ice cream for everyone. There was even a bouncy castle.

Of course, we got lots of work done thanks to our Muralist Greta McLain and so many members of the community. With all the work we got done at this event, along with previous events, we are in great shape to start putting up the mural very soon.

Today was, in fact, the last mural event and unfortunately there won’t be any more community painting, but don’t forget to keep checking in with our blog, because all of this fantastic work will be going up on Folwell School, Performing Arts Magnet very soon. There, we will be having an unveiling of the mural. Keep checking back for dates and more information. Thanks to everyone who came by today!

Farmers Market Event June 6th

Today was a fantastic day for a mural at the farmers market. We were very fortunate and the rain waited till tonight so we could work and stay dry. We had a lot of great help from people in the community today. It was Amazing to see how many people participated.

Our Very talented muralist Greta was of course there today, and she had a little helper with her too. Staff members from Folwell Magnet school and Roosevelt high-school were also there to help out.

With all the help we had today we were able to make a fantastic amount of progress today. Remember there is only ONE more event on June 18th. Make sure you keep paying attention after that event is over though because vey soon we will be announcing the unveiling date for the mural! see you all on the 18th!

Mural Event 5/30/15

Today was another successful mural event. Luckily, the sun came out to help us. It was also the Folwell Performing Arts School Carnaval, so we had a fantastic turnout. We were so pleased to see so many people there today.

The mural progressed smoothly since we had lots of help from everyone. Students and their families, the Folwell staff, and our talented muralist, Greta McLain, were all hard at work making progress.

By the end of the day we had accomplished a lot. Remember: there are only two (2) community events left. The next one is on June 6th at the Midtown Farmers’ Market. Hope to see you there!

Connections Mural Event 5/29/15

Even though it was a rainy day, we still had a fantastic event at Roosevelt High School! We had lots of help and support.

Our talented muralist, Greta McLain, was there as always helping us out and directing everything to make sure it ran smoothly. We even had the fire department stop by.

Yet again this was another awesome event that we all consider a great success. There was some great progress made today and we are actually ahead of schedule. Make sure to keep checking up on the project to see when the final reveal date is! See you all tomorrow (5/30) at Folwell Arts Magnet School at 1 o’clock.

First Folwell Community Event

Hey everyone! May 7th was a great day for an event at Folwell. There was a great turn out and it was great to meet everyone that showed up. Unfortunately, the weather turned out to be a little muggy and rainy, but that certainly didn’t deter the students from working on the mural.

It was wonderful to see how many students showed up and helped out with the mural. We also had some help from the Folwell faculty.

We received plenty of help from our talented muralist Greta Mclain. By the end of the day the students and faculty had made some amazing progress on the mural and everyone had a fun time working together.

Overall, this was yet another fantastic event and I hope to see you all on May 29th at Roosevelt High School.

Nokomis Healthy Seniors Event

Thanks to everyone who made it on Thursday, it was great to see everyone there. We had a lot of fun and were able to accomplish great progress on the mural. It was lots of fun getting to work with the Nokomis Seniors community, and we even had a visit from several Roosevelt High School students.

Of course, our muralist Greta McLain was also there to work with the seniors and help guide the process along, making sure everything ran smoothly and efficiently.

We even had the arts coordinator from Folwell and a Roosevelt High School teacher stop by to help out for a while.

By the end of the event, there had been great progress made for the mural. It’s moving along at a great pace, especially with the help of so many members of the community.

Overall this was another huge success for the mural project. It was great to see everyone who stopped by, and it was a pleasure to see all the new faces. We hope to see you all again at our next event on May 7th at Folwell School in Minneapolis.