ELECT murals add color to campus and church

Senior Kathryn Franklin in front of one of the ELECT murals

Volcanoes are erupting in the Chapel lobby. 30 children and 3 Covenant students are responsible.

Purple explosions on canvas depict the separation of land and sea as part of Art Major Kathryn Franklin’s Senior Integration Project, a 6-part, kid-created mural of the Genesis account.

Franklin said her project was a collaborative artistic effort. On the first day of New City East Lake’s after school program ELECT, Covenant Alumnus Caleb Long retold the Genesis creation story. Inspired by the tale, juniors Audrey Brown and Drew Belz dreamt of helping the ELECT kids paint a creation mural. Two days later, Brown had lunch with Franklin and told her the idea. Franklin was shocked and excited.

“When I switched majors from Community Development to Art my sophomore year, I decided to do a mural with kids for my SIP,” Franklin said, “but I didn’t think it was going to be possible.”

Brown said she and Franklin brainstormed with Belz, who offered to film the project. Franklin, Brown and Belz picked a weekend for painting and recruited about 30 young artists from the congregations and tutoring programs of both New City Fellowship churches.

On Friday, Mar. 27, in the cafeteria used as New City East Lake’s sanctuary, kids and volunteer teachers watched a shortened Planet Earth film edited by Belz, then read the creation story and answered questions about what they saw and heard, said Brown.

“We asked them, why did God do this?” Brown said, “Because he loves us,” “God made us so he can love us. He is creative, and he made you in his image so you can be creative.”

Teachers split the kids into seven groups, one for each day of creation, and used lesson plans prepared by education major Hellen McKeon to conceptualize the days of creation in drawings, Brown said.

After the kids left, Franklin said, she organized the drawings to make a unified, 6-pannelled mural,. Belz then scanned and projected each group of the drawings onto the canvases for Franklin and Brown to trace. When the kids came back on Saturday morning, “there were their drawings on the canvas!” said Brown.

By noon on Saturday, the mural was done. “Once they started painting, all the energy came out,” said Brown. “We sat back and watched them go.”

The mural and Belz’s film of the kid artists in action will be displayed until May 9.