Story and photos by Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
“In a budget crisis and a country which centers capitalism above all else; arts tends to not be the focus, and is the first thing to get cut. But here, we still believe in its continued importance and ability to bring community together.” These were the words of South Seattle College‘s Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Dr. Eileen Jimenez. She spoke today to a crowd which, despite unsettled weather, showed up for the college’s unveiling of its new mural.
The presentation of the mural, designed by Seattle artist Tori Shao, marked the culmination of this quarter’s ART204 (Mural Painting) class at South. Students in the class worked throughout the entirety of the spring quarter on the project.
(Tori Shao and Scott Méxcal)
“We are always looking at underutilized spaces here at the college, and bringing them to life.” said Scott Méxcal, the professor who taught ART204 this quarter. Some of his students from the class, Milli and June, spoke about the mural and how it brought them and their classmates closer together through the intensive process of collaboration.
Many of the speakers also talked about the larger themes of the mural, and the way they relate to indigeneity and the Northwest environment. The mural depicts a nurse log; a decayed log from a fallen tree which provides a fertile place for new seeds in the forest to grow, representing the cycle of death and rebirth.
The ceremony opened with drumming by Willard Bill Jr., Tribal Government Liaison to Seattle Colleges, and member of the Muckleshoot Tribe. After the drumming, he spoke about how he was inspired by the portrayal of ferns on the mural, and how he was looking at restarting practices of bringing indigenous food sources such as ferns back into his diet after years of colonization. Professor Méxcal spoke about the way in which nature seemed to echo the themes of the mural itself during the painting process, telling how the trees shone their shadows on it during long spring afternoons, and one day in which two eagles circled overhead while the class was painting outside.
And artist Shao told her story of the mural:
These themes are carried over in the college’s ongoing commitment to offer more murals. The college told us that this is their second of seven planned murals, with a new one planned to be unveiled around this time each year. The number, they said, represents the ‘seventh generation’ principle in many lines of indigenous American thinking – that one must consider the impact of their current actions on the seventh generation after them.