The Bartle Mural

If you’ve ever been on the Bartle Elementary School playground, you know how massive the back wall is and how terribly bare it looked. The Highland Park Guerilla Art Club (GAC), a branch of the Highland Park Arts Commission, comprised of compassionate, talented kids in our community, saw an opportunity. Serendipitously, efforts were already underway to beautify the playground area and make it more engaging for the students. Susan Odato, a long-time resident of Highland Park and an employee at the district had begun hand-painting colorful, interactive games and designs on the grounds of the area. Hearing GAC’s proposal for a mural, Susan and Bartle principle, Jennifer Knapp were fully supportive. We set to planning that afternoon and began painting about a week later. (We were THAT excited!)

In designing the mural, GAC enlisted the help of Sonya Elefante, a member of the Highland Park Arts Commission, a sensational artist, and a generally outstanding human being. (Seriously. If we have to spend hours at a wall with anyone, we pick HER!) Together we brainstormed a concept. Bartle School’s mascot is the dolphin so we knew we HAD to get a dolphin up on the wall but we didn’t want it to end there. This is a school, after all. We wanted our mural to be educational. Moreover, it’s the mission of the GAC to bring issues that are important to our young artists out into the community – for consideration and discussion. Climate change and animal welfare are big on their list of concerns. And so, our educational mural became a design of not just dolphins threatened by pollution, overfishing, and climate change, but other endangered plants and animals of the sea.

The artists of GAC were tasked with some research – finding sea life that they’d like to include in the mural and educate the public about it. Their return lists were (sadly) long and extensive – so many threatened sea life! Sonya helped narrow down the list, designing a colorful seascape that includes: dolphins, a sea turtle, coral, sea anemone, and clownfish.
(A brief note of apology here to the GAC artists who really wanted to see an axolotl up on the wall. Though axolotls are critically endangered, with a threat of them going extinct a very real and near possibility, they are, as we all know, fresh-water creatures and didn’t fit in with the seascape we were painting. We do encourage everyone here to take some time to research the axolotl and find ways to help their numbers.)

We knew that our message wouldn’t just be a painted mural alone. We wanted to find a way to educate and CONNECT with the people viewing our artwork. We wanted to share the WHY! And so, the idea: QR codes! Using the research the GAC artists had collected about each of these endangered or threatened sea life, we created write-ups about each one and linked them to the QR codes on the wall. Now, anyone who passes by the mural can more than just view the art; they can INTERACT with it and learn.

We hope the message of our artwork will inspire you to help us help these animals. It’s really, really important that we clean up our planet for our GAC artists and future generations of GAC artists to enjoy.

On behalf of all of the members of GAC,
Nikki Gonzalez, Coordinator, HPAC Member