School lockers become large canvas

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

Next time you pass by a certain set of lockers on the basement floor of Riverdale High School, a couple of big brown eyes might stare at you.

That is because they have been painted right in the middle of the lockers as part of a group art project for Grade 7 and 8 students supervised by mural painter Mario Bérubé and the children's' visual arts teacher, Rima Moushaghayan.

"I like to share my passion," explained Bérubé as one group among the 60 students participating in the project drew preliminary sketches in their classroom before storming the lockers with brushes and buckets.

"Maybe some of them will pursue some kind of work like this," Bérubé said, adding that he did not have the chance to see professional artists come to guide schoolchildren when he was a teenager.

Moushaghayan, who applied for a grant from the Quebec education and culture ministries through the Lester B. Pearson School Board to get the necessary funding for the project, said this was a great opportunity for the kids to apply what they have learned to leave a mark on their school.

"Nobody's going to paint over your work," she explained in class to one student that was concerned about having her drawing erased from the lockers after it was done.

The group of 60 students were divided into several different smaller teams to make the project manageable. "The first two groups did the background of the painting," Moushaghayan said.

A bright, apple-green thus covered the traditionally yellow lockers of the school.

"The third group did drawings on the lockers," said Moushaghayan, and the last two would be doing the same.

A theme of arts and sports was chosen for this project, as it proved to be the most popular among students based on a survey conducted by Bérubé and Moushaghayan. The artist's intention to teach the children to stick to the theme was clear as he repeatedly hammered the point home during a short speech before they began their sketches.

"That's not arts or sports," he told one student who approached him with a sketch of a robot duelling a beast. "But it's cool," protested the young man before returning with a stick-figure artist tossing a javelin.

The project was made possible through a grant by the Culture à l' École program, run jointly by the Quebec Ministry of Education and Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communication. Besides hooking up artists with schools for projects like the one at Riverdale, Culture à l' École also encourages culture by awarding school grants for field trips to the theatre or museums.

This is not the first mural project at Riverdale; the school's large cafeteria is home to two.