Student murals transform fine arts building at City College – The Express

The Fischbacher Fine Arts Building at City College was presented with a fresh new look as art students from Mural Art 330 used the front and back of the building as a canvas to create their well-thought-out designs on May 8. 

This was the first year the mural class had permission to paint on the actual building. 

“It took some time to get approval to paint on the Art Department building, but now we have permission going forward to paint murals on the walls each year,” said Art 330 Prof. Gioia Fonda.

The murals will be changed during the spring semester of each year as they paint a new mural on top of the old one. Fonda hopes, “this will draw interest to their class.” 

Students had designed a variety of different concepts, and worked together to come up with the general color scheme and look of the murals. They chose bright colors because they felt it was welcoming and they had an intentional theme for both walls.

“The mural on the front of the campus is to help promote the Art Department and the mural on the backside of the building is representative of the school, since the panther is the mascot and represents school spirit,” Fonda said.

The mural on the front of the fine art building was themed after art supplies that the students in the art building use. The images of tools are from the variety of classes that are taught, such as, sculpturing, ceramics, printmaking, painting and drawing.

“Because that wall faces the campus, it’s a way to inform students about what goes on in this building,” said Fonda.

Brianna Wong had taken art classes in the past and had a yearning to get back into learning new art forms that she had never tapped into before, and the mural class was one of them. “I had never known that this could be a class,” Wong said, “so I feel to be a part of this class and to collaborate with my classmates is special.”

Monique Cabading has always been interested in art and had taken a lot of art classes throughout high school and college. “My daughter asked if we could take this class together, and since the class falls on a Friday it worked out for the both of us to take it together,” Cabading said. 

The mom and daughter who share the same interest in art, have been working together on the murals development since the beginning of the semester. 

Fonda’s hope is that the murals that her students paint this year will be just as welcoming for everyone as they were last year for the Makerspace, where students painted a mural on the front of the building of poppy flowers.

“Last year, our class painted on the Makerspace building,” Fonda said, “and I feel that the Makerspace is now much more welcoming than what it was before.”