Teaching Strategies
Digital Murals
While this curriculum envisions a mural painted traditionally, digital art, collage, and more can accomplish the same goal in a more transportable way. Student art can be projected on walls, or disseminated in a virtual space. Digital art has been a huge part of Baca’s process, so much that since 1996 she has led the Digital/Mural lab as part of a collaboration between UCLA and SPARC.[105]
Gabriela Rodriguez-Gomez argues this as type of digital art can “transport the community experience of Chicana/o/x, Mexican American, and Indigenous peoples from local to global audiences.”[106] Alma Lopez, another Chicana muralist and contemporary of Baca, utilized digital copies of murals to allow them to circulate when the physical copy was destroyed.[107] Digital art software can allow students to paint digitally in the style of Baca.
Community Engagement
Oftentimes my students are used to the art classroom as a place of free expression. However, as they develop the illustrations for this project, they should be seeking community feedback and consensus as much as possible. While Baca spearheaded the design and implementation of the Great Wall, she also worked closely to ensure the mural represented the desires of the community, as discussed above, rather than her own design. This forum can change depending on where the mural is painted – this may involve seeking feedback from the school community through physical or digital public comment, or physical or digital meetings. The teacher ought to support the students in distinguishing how to listen to feedback: not every critique is valid, not every criticism must be internalized, but this public art must reflect the public as much as the artist. Often students are taught to give critique, here they should learn to take critique.
Comments: