On the Wall: Art Students Learn to Paint a Mural

In this article, the author describes the Mississippi University for Women's studio art course that teaches students the ins and outs of mural making from inception and design to application of the final glaze. While students in other courses may spend the semester working toward a final exam or paper, this four-and-a-half-week summer course culminates in a 12-by-30-foot mural celebrating the history of Columbus' Tombigbee River. Although the students spend several hours a day hanging from scaffolding in the Mississippi summer sun applying paint to the wall of a downtown building, the course is not just about brushwork. The group also pores over old photographs in library and historical-society archives researching minute details of period costume, hairstyles, and the city's layout to ensure accuracy in the mural's scene of steamboats and parasol-toting pedestrians. To give students a taste of the planning, paperwork, and diplomacy that go into large-scale public projects, Alexander Stelioes-Wills, the assistant professor who teaches the course, has them prepare proposals for their own mural projects. Each student is asked to research an area of the city, design a mural that reflects its history, and write a proposal that could persuade a donor, grant-making body, or governmental agency of the mural's desirability. Stelioes-Wills plans to submit the students' proposals to the city's historic-preservation board and hopes that, if one is accepted, the university might build another course around the mural next summer.