Friday was a big work day on the mural...my goal was to get the rest of the background and all the stencils done, with only some key details and touch-ups left for Saturday. Was our group up to this task? Absolutely!
First, we had to cut out all the stencils (Трафарет--trafah-rret) so we could apply them to the wall. We had not chosesn easy pictures to "stencilize"--the "old Krasnoyarsk" buildings were in some cases very complicated, even when simplified to just black and white shapes--e.g., cathedrals with thin little windows and gables. With a stencil, where you cut out paper is where the paint goes, and what you don't cut out remains white. You can't have any white "islands" in your drawing that aren't connected to the white of the background, or else they will get cut out too, e.g. white windows inside the borders of a black building surface. So I had to refine most of the stencil drawings so they met this criteria. Fortunately, of the several students who had arrived early to help me, one girl really caught on to how to do this and helped refine and re-trace a lot of the drawings onto vellum paper, from which they would be cut. What happens a lot is that once one student understands how to do something, he or she will teach the others, in Russian, so I no longer have to worry about showing each student what to do, which has been essential throughout our work on the mural.
Even with our edits, the stencils were still very detailed and time-consuming to cut out, and I began to worry that the cutting could take all evening and get frustrating or boring for the group. However, the students handled this challenge wonderfully well, demonstrating their continued commitment to their decision behind using those old building pictures for stencils. I don't think they normally get to use real Xacto knives--apparently they're a lot more expensive in Krasnoyarsk, and the group laughed when I wrote the word "Xacto" for them--so that was fun. They did quite understandably express the need for a tea and cookie break before starting to paint on the wall again, after finishing all the concentrated tracing and cutting!
We got to work again on the background. There was an amazingly cute little 11-year-old girl, Natasha, the daughter or granddaughter of one of the school teachers I think, who turned out to be a great help/doer-of-everything, always with the biggest smile I've ever seen. Natasha and others quickly painted in the entire blue river. The three students, Alex, Alex, and Masha, who had decided to do the futuristic graffiti background, continued to work on their individual spots on the upper wall--these were coming along beautifully and I decided to pretty much let these artists do their thing. But I did assert that I felt strongly that not only should the students keep putting thought into mixing the colors for this section, they should avoid putting too much white or any black up there, so that there would be a clear distinction between the future section and the black and white stencils that would represent the past.
At a certain point when it became clear that we were running out of simple things to do on the background, I realized it would be necessary to stop the whole group for a Трафарет demo. Fortunately, the English teacher was there to help translate my instructions. I showed people how to very carefully tape and paint over the stencils. After this the group was pretty self-sufficient and even the youngest and least experienced students were able to do a good job getting all the stencils on the wall. They even started doing touch-ups on the stencils without my asking. I am really glad I made the stencils an important part of this project since most people seemed to have never done them before. While this mural is on the whole very student-directed, this is where I feel I have really taught them something new. I hope they will be inspired to keep making stencils on their own!
Another thing I have been realizing throughout this project is how much I am able to communicate without words--e.g., by pointing to art supplies or demonstrating skills with my hands. I guess for this reason art really is a universal language, at the risk of sounding corny...I am also realizing, however, than when it comes to making nuanced artistic decisions as a group, or explaining my reasoning behind something that is not as obvious--e.g. not using black in the "future" background, or waiting until the exact right color is mixed to begin doing background touch-ups--it is important to be able to use words! This is where the several people who know English were very helpful.
Very productive day... left around 9pm, feeling excited about seeing the project to completion the next day!
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