Doorway to Imagination

Doorway to Imagination is the exterior continuation of Tree of Knowledge at the Laura Wheeler Waring Public School. Its design is an emblem of the community process Mural Arts is known for. As an artist, I feel it is my most successful melding of community desires and personal expression to date. The interior mural depicts, among other things, the evolution of a seed to mirror the evolution of a child. This was a concept brought to me by the community, as was a want for sunflowers. Therefore, I depicted the evolution of a sunflower seed on the interior so that the adult sunflowers found on the exterior wall were related to the overall narrative of the piece. The school community also requested roses, which I interpreted with an art nouveau flare, as many architectural accents throughout the Fairmount neighborhood come from that era.

The left panel of this piece reflects more of my personal love for “imagined botanics.” This tall flower is inspired by a lily of the valley, however it is its own entity, recognizable as a flower, but not as any particular type of flower. Because of this, I used the most amount of screen-printed glass throughout these purple buds. The screens used to print on the glass were made directly from Big Picture Program student’s drawings. I found it important to showcase their work in a flower born of my imagination, seeing as so much of my inspiration for this piece came from the students attending this school.

Generally speaking, Doorway to Imagination is intended to create awe and wonder on the part of the children who pass through this doorway daily and for years to come. Just as Tree of Knowledge is there to speak to a child’s imagination, so is this exterior section of this project. Because this piece can be seen by the entire neighborhood, rather than limited to those going into the school, it was important to me to create a bit of inspiration for the adults seeing this section as well. Not only are all of the flowers in the piece larger than any child, they tower above adults as well. As people walk by, I can only hope that they feel small like a child again; that the dwarfing quality of these larger-than-life flowers manages to transport them to a different place and time. I believe as adults, we often forget to let our imaginations run free. Creating this Doorway to Imagination is my small attempt to open up peoples’ imaginations, regardless of age.