Jam investigates street art

We drove around Annapolis Maryland to check out some murals. We talked about how artists are commissioned to do these paintings and the difference between murals and graffiti.

One thing I was surprised to see around the city was these fun giant chicken sculptures. Throughout Baltimore you can find giant crab sculptures, and in Norfolk, VA they have mermaid sculptures. I understand crabs for Baltimore and mermaids for Norfolk, but the Annapolis chicken?? I will have to look up the history and the city’s connection to this bird. I love these types of sculptures and how they are used to define and bring identity to a city. I think our City of Laurel should have something but what should it be? Let the ideas begin.

Back to the blog- So we talked about how murals are made. They typically start with a smaller sketch. Once the artist is finish with the design they create a grid over it to understand the proportion and scale in relation to the wall that it will go on. Lastly the sketch gets translated on to the wall. For this blog activity we took this concept and applied it to the sidewalk. This is what I call color by number at its simplest. You gotta love street art.

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Activity

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Search your city for street art. Keep an eye out for murals, sculptures, and fun pavement designs.

Case study #8: Create your own street art. Use sidewalk chalk to recreate the case study picture on the ground.

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