Latin
American Project
Mural:
Edelstein's Group
Mural:
Edelstein's Group
| Avishek Rana hard at work on the Mayan Calendar of the mural. | Avishek and Jonathan Ellis work hard on the project. Artists included Christa Lee, Lily Monsma, Sean Kelly, Marika Scotten, Lauren Logan, Avishek, Jonathan and others. The Student project director is Lara Rice. | Sean Kelly doing a
very good job of painting the Mayan moon... |
Mural
Project Summary
This is the art page, on which we show students working on the mural, whose theme represents their view on Latin America. Sean Kelly, Christa Lee, Marika Scotton, Lily Monsma, Avishek Rana, Lauren Logan, and Jonathan Ellis were the art crew. The mural portrays the aspirations of the people of Latin America in a variety of revolutionary contexts. There is the revolution of farming, symbolized by the corn. Peasant farmers are facing stiff competition by cheap foreign corn in a globalized market. The scene, which was intentionally done to represent magical realism, represents all the working farmers holding up the clouds, in which float the images of three revolutionary icons: Emiliano Zapata, Augusto Sandino, and Subcommandante Marcus. These icons show the hopes that the everyday Latin American people share as they face the world of the future, which may or may not include them as the primary beneficiaries.
Every single thing on the mural symbolizes some aspect of Latin American life. The quetzal birds on the mural represents the traditional mythologies of the past among the people of Latin America. There is an American bald eagle staring at the image of Fidel Castro as he lurks in the background. The eagle flies close to the Cuban leader, to keep a close watch on him. The extended claws seem almost as if they are ready to do a little damage to Castro. The trees right above the field of corn stalks represent the natural world, in which deforestation is a serious and worsoning problem in the Americas.
Here is the finished product of Nathan Hale's 10th grade academy class. Mr Edelstein's class has done an excellent job potraying revolutionary aspects of ideals of daily agrarian life in Latin America. The mural shows farmers at work in the corn fields, living their lives with the icons of three of Latin America's most famous revolutionaries in the clouds above their heads, as if always in mind. Revolution and tyranny are the extremes of political life, but in Latin America they are an everyday theme, acted out in small and large revolutions of ideas, beliefs, technology, and world view.