News
Students Will Paint a Colorful Mural on a MetroBus at School Arts Festival
Local students will have a night of fun painting a MetroBus and exploring other creative arts, including dance and music, as part of the Arts Festival at the Maplewood Richmond Heights Elementary School.
What:
Arts Festival
Where:
Maplewood Richmond Heights (MRH) Elementary School
1800 Princeton Place
Richmond Heights, MO 63117
When:
Friday, April 29, 2011 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The Arts Festival is free and open to the public. The event features great food, fun activities, live music, dance, and art from all over St. Louis. Sally Saldana is the event organizer and art teacher at MRH Elementary. “It is important because it gives the students a chance to experience the different arts, especially the types of art they can’t experience during school,” said Saldana.
Saldana said she is always looking for new and exciting ways to keep the students interested and they have never painted a MetroBus before. They will on Friday night as part of Metro’s Arts in Transit Program. The design that students will paint on the MetroBus was created by local artist Steve Edwards. “Preschoolers, grade schoolers, high schoolers, teachers and parents can have wildly different tastes. I wanted to create a mural that appeals to all of those groups at once, and that introduces viewers to the Seed to Table project,” Edwards said.
The Seed to Table Garden Program is a Maplewood Richmond Heights School District project that helps students learn from the natural world around them. It educates students on nature, organic gardening, and nutrition so they can make informed decisions about their own health, the health of the community and the health of the planet.
Edwards’ bold, colorful mural design features enormous cartoon symbols of the Seed to Table flora and fauna which include vegetables, chickens, a honeybee, a sunflower and a giant profile of MRH’s sports mascot, Jax.
“I suppose gardening is a little bit like painting a bus. It’s messy. Your hands get dirty but it’s fun, and at the end there’s something colorful and beautiful that everyone can enjoy,” Edwards said.
Edwards, Saldana and Arts in Transit Director David Allen from Metro will be available for interviews at the event through 8 p.m. Tom Wickersham, Director of Communications for the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District will be available to the media until 7 p.m.
For more information about the Arts Festival, you can call the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District at 314-644-4400 or visit www.mrhsd.org.
