PS 234: Independence

May Bukowski and students from PS 234 explore “Independence” in two lunchroom murals designed and produced by third graders.

Artist Statement

This project was created to reflect sociology and what the kids have been learning throughout the school year. These topics included transportation, bridges, boats, and the community.  This school brings up the idea of kids being independent, hence why it’s called the independent school. They wanted the kids to be really in the process of what was going on to the mixing of the paint, the way the art work looked (wanting it to look exactly like the kids drawings), even the final details that were added to the mural. 

This project was created by third graders for about 15 weeks during school hours. The wall that was picked for this project was for two opposite ends of the cafeteria wall. The school had no art or and color really in the cafeteria, so this created a level of appeal and brightened up the cafeteria for the students.  During the production process, we focused on exploring the past, present, and future of transportation, bridges, boats, and community.

In the mural you can see different types of transportation indicating the past, 100 plus years prior, we have the horse drawn carriage, bicycle, and the railroad. For the present time we have skateboards, a train station, airplanes, helicopters, even some of the known buildings that we didn’t have in the past like the new world trade building, and the whole foods. For the future apparently the kids went with their imaginations. They really talked about wanting food like structures like the taco bridge, the flying pizza and apple. We also have some things like the flying car. These scenes were created in NYC and Tribeca to indicate where they are and where their community is located.