MURALS AT THE FOWLER MUSEUM, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

Close-up of mural created by UCLA students for Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, CA.

On a recent visit to the Fowler Museum on the UCLA campus, I was struck by the murals lining the walls surrounding the center atrium. Printed with colorful, overlapping images that repeated across the surface, they invited me to look closer. There are six of them—two with enlarged versions of the individual images, and four with the images much smaller, printed in rows and covering the entire surface of the canvas. Standing far away, each mural looks like a giant vertical carpet, filling the available space. Close-up the effect is almost three-dimensional, like an optical illusion, the designs shimmering in the air.

According to the information panel about the murals, they were created by UCLA students working with Brazilian artists and activists Monica Nador and Bruno Oliviera of the Jardim Miriam Arte Clube (JAMAC) in Sao Paolo.  (JAMAC fosters collaboration between artists, local residents, and activists to create murals, prints, and public interventions that reflect community narratives and struggles.) Through a series of workshops, conversations led to a design process, followed by stencil making, and finally a discussion-based construction of patterns that reflected the complex interactions between the community and the artist.

In the following photographs you can appreciate the complexity of the designs and the richness of the patterns and colors.  But to get the full impact you have to see them in person.

To find out about the meaning of the images and the source of their inspiration you can listen to interviews with the students HERE.. 

The Fowler Museum is open Wednesday 12-8 pm, and Thursday through Sunday 12-5 pm. Admission is always free.