HIGH SCHOOL MURAL LONG IN THE MAKING; L.A.-THEMED WORK TO BE DEDICATED TODAY.Byline: Lisa Van Proyen Daily News Staff Writer It took 13 years, 400 students and countless hours to finish the mural that stretches 45 yards through the main hall of Taft High School's administration building. Today, the mural, ``Neighborhoods of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. ,'' will be dedicated at a ceremony attended by many of the student artists and the teacher who saw their painstaking work to completion. ``I feel really relieved that whole wall is finished and it will provide a history for the children of the students who attend Taft,'' said Kathi Martin, an art teacher at Taft for 17 years. ``The mural is a time capsule that reflects the culture of the '80s and '90s. Things we take for granted now will turn nostalgic by the time these students' children go to Taft,'' she said. Thirteen years may seem like a long time, but consider the complexity of the mural, she said. ``It took this long because we use tiny little brushes and we want the detail.'' Sometimes the students would complete a 7-foot-tall, 12-foot-wide panel within a semester, but some took as long as a year, she said. Also, the mural project was designed to span many years, to give different groups of students a chance to paint scenes from their neighborhoods - about 14 in all. At Taft, students are bused in from across the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. and elsewhere in Los Angeles. ``I want them to see their neighborhood in a new way and to become more aware of their immediate environment to see it in a fresh way,'' said Martin. There's the plush, green rolling hills Rolling hills are like a mountain chain, only a "hill chain" of hills that roll on and on continually. You will often find them in between plains and mountains, near major rivers, or randomly anywhere. The only places without rolling hills are deserts and flood plains. filled with livestock at Woodland Hills' Pierce College painted next to the hustle and bustle of downtown Los Angeles' congested con·gest·ed adj. Affected with or characterized by congestion. congested ENT adjective Referring to a boggy blood-filled tissue. See Nasal congestion. freeways. Also reflected are the sandy beaches, the Los Angeles Zoo The Los Angeles Zoo founded in 1966, is a large zoo located in Los Angeles, California, USA. The Zoo, located in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, is home to 1,200 animals from around the world. , Hollywood, the projects of East Los Angeles East Los Angeles, uninc. city (1990 pop. 126,379), Los Angeles co., S Calif., a residential suburb of Los Angeles, in an industrial area. It has a large Mexican-American population. There is a performing arts center and a cultural center. A junior college is there. and the Getty Center. ``It makes you calm and happy. It just takes you to another place for the few seconds that you walk by,'' said one student, Banafsheh Mazloumi, 16, as she passed the mural. One panel depicts California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an , after the 1994 earthquake, with large cracks in its buildings. Another panel shows the heart of downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The sprawling, multi-centered megacity is such that its downtown core is often considered just another district like Hollywood or , which the students gave an inside joke for posterity: Martin stuck in traffic. ``Well, that was three cars ago,'' she said. Some of the alumni painters are expected to return to Taft High today to view the completed mural for the first time. ``For a lot of them, the thrill will be seeing what they didn't finish,'' she said. The artists got credit for their work, with the most advanced art students chosen. Before starting a panel, about 50 students took a field trip to the area they will paint, shooting photos and ordering maps from the chambers of commerce, officials said. With each stroke of the paintbrush (graphics, tool) Paintbrush - A Microsoft Windows tool for creating bitmap graphics. on the mural, students learned perspective, how to use color and how to put narration into a story they want to tell, Martin said. Building a mural also instills a sense of teamwork, Martin said. Today's dedication will be held from 10 to 11 a.m. in the administration building at the school. |
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