The mural Streams of Consciousness on the second floor of Atkins was created by students in ARTP 3161: Mixed Media Painting and ARTR 3162: Large Format Printing & Mixed Media in Spring 2022 under the supervision of professors Maja Godlewska and Erik Waterkotte.
Students in both mixed-media classes read and discussed Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble, looked at Allora-Calzadilla projects (including their interpretation of Paul Chen's The Great Silence). They also watched fragments of Doug Aitken's Migration. As an ongoing homework assignment, students walked in nature, observed, read poetry related to meditation in nature, photographed and sketched.
They then worked in teams, gathered visual material in the UNC Charlotte gardens and greenhouses (photographed with hand-made impromptu analogue color filters held in front of the cameras), and manipulated it digitally. They experimented with paint, markers, created multiple sketches, synesthesia-based drawings and paintings. Digital and analogue visual material was layered digitally, enlarged, and printed commercially by Heritage Printing, Signs and Displays Co. on 4x8" sintra boards. Teams of students then painted on boards with Golden Theme mural paints, hand cut boards to create organic pathways and organic shapes within the surfaces. Final design decisions were made onsite, before and during installation.
Description and photographs provided by Professors Godlewska and Waterkotte.