Each year, several Auburn University students have the opportunity to connect with the community through art.
As one of the most recent projects last fall, students volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County three times a week, spending time with the youth and teaching them art classes. The project culminated with the team painting a mural as a gift to the club.
"The students were allowed to get to know the community that they were creating the mural for," said Wendy Deschene, associate professor of art. "They tried very hard to learn the young members' names, and get to know what they liked and who they were, as well as to share their art skills with them."
Deschene, whose own works have been found displayed both on the street and in galleries around the world, was the instigator behind the community outreach project.
"I strongly believe that art can be anywhere in the world at any time," she said. "Often I think art lies dying on the wall of a gallery and is at its best when it's being created in a lively community with conversation and the energy of both the artist and the viewer interacting. The murals I create with my students are a direct manifestation of my philosophy."
Many of the students involved in the project were eager to simply connect with the Auburn community, a task sometimes difficult to fit into the busy schedule of an art student.
"We sometimes forget that the city of Auburn lives on the outside of the University, and Wendy often assigns her class to do mural work both as a teaching tool for large-format painting and as a service to the community," said Kathryn Beck, senior in fine arts. "We often get shut up in our studios, and we forget the experience of getting to watch someone create something beautiful. It was wonderful to provide that for someone else, getting to explain how the process works and illustrating it on the walls themselves."
Deschene said she hopes to find further opportunities to connect her students to the communities of Auburn and Opelika.
"It was great to watch the Auburn students paint and have the youth members come by and ask them questions and have conversations with them, as at the point the mural was actually being created, they were all friends," Deschene said. "Age didn't matter as art was the focus, a binding power that allowed these wonderful interactions."
The mural the Auburn art department left behind was a conversation piece and the document of these relationships forged between youths and mentor artists.
The mural will remain on the walls of the after-school club, connecting the youth members to Auburn University and inspiring them artistically and creatively.
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