During our residency in Allentown we spent four days teaching in schools. Two of those days we worked with high school students and the other two days we taught at a local elementary school. Much tape was flung, flinged and formed onto the lusciously blank walls of these two schools and the impact of two days work left no surface unaffected. Below is a small selection of the wondrous imaginations of these young students taking on a new art medium. DEIRUFF HIGH SCHOOL These photos are from a group project we facilitated with a group of seniors. They had an incredible space to work in. It was a covered walkway that was supported by a short series of arched columns. This architecture became the catalyst for their mural-making ideas. When the group got together they were asked to brainstorm on a theme for a mural. Fairly quickly the historical time frame for the mural was decided upon; it was to be set in Roman times. This decision determined the era and the dress, then the students continued to throw out ideas for the narrative. The group was intrigued about having a character tossing coins out into a crowd. This figure would be the keystone for a plethora of reactions to the free money flying through the air and on the ground. Each student created a figure relating to how people react when given the opportunity to have free money. Needless-to-say the seed of greed plants the ferns of chaos.  This student drew a muscular gentleman flying through the air to kick the snot out of another guy (who had the ignominious affront to have caught some money before he did). Money makes people do crazy things sometimes... This maiden was on the far left-hand side of the mural in the garden. This figure holds an olive branch. It is possible this artist wanted her figure to wish peace upon the money-crazed proceedings. Here they are.  These are the students that dove headlong into the throes of collaborative mural making and came out on top. They had all created figures that were life-sized. They had also done some interesting things with the architecture, choosing to draw in a set of columns to echo the real columns on the opposite wall.  Their work as a group was extraordinary and we invited them to come sport their skills at the Lehigh Senior Citizens Center the following week. This drawing is a self portrait of the warrior princess that lurks in many a teenage girl. This young Xena came complete with filigree arm bands and zany sandals. Portraying himself as a taller winged super guy, this student's confident mark-making convinced us that he definitely needed a whole wall to express himself. Something of a stylemaster, this student had a natural sense of large-scale composition. The confines of the page may forever now be his nemesis.  MOSSER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL In terms of Tape Art, Mosser Elementary is a school with two good things going for it: a charismatic, caring principal and hallways of pearly white walls. As the word elementary would imply, we spent our two days there working with the budding future of tomorrow. Class after class of enthusiastic young 'uns bedecked the hallways, massaging the walls with their 5 fingers of fury. These are two wrestlers created by a pair of second graders. They created this scene with the fervor of two contestants in the ring. This was an interesting solution to the issue of how to make apples for this apple tree. As you can see, this third grader rolled the tape to make three dimensional apples that literally hung from the tree. Here is a small section from a Tape Art mural created by a class of 4th graders. In all honesty, we do not remember specifically what the theme for this particular exercise was. But judging by the photo, it obviously had people in it, a sense of environment and something to do with a guy with a birthday hat on holding another little guy by the legs.  There is also a princess or prom queen. We do like the minimalist pattern of bark on the tree. If we think of the theme we will post it later.