St. Thomas ‘Planting Seeds As We Grow Into the Future of Mind, Culture, and Spirit’ Mural
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The Mural Project first started in 2016 and was fueled by students at St. Thomas’ desire to have an artwork that represents the unique stories and diversity of the campus community at University of St. Thomas. Undergraduate Student Government provided funding for a mural to be made in the Anderson Student Center. A committee was created and the art process was led by the JXTA team.
This mural aims to continue important conversations happening at the University of St. Thomas; the design committee settled on these two questions to drive this discussion:
- What is something about yourself that you don’t want to forget – before you came here?
- What is something about yourself you can’t show here?
In order to think more deeply about these questions, the JXTA team and artist Susan Armington employed a participatory art exercise called Seed Objects. In this exercise, participants created a simple object out of a limited set of materials to answer one or both questions. The making process allows both a longer period of quiet reflection for each person, as well as a way to enrich each story once they were shared at the end of the session. As you can see in the mural, these stories were powerful ones about experience, struggle, and identity that St. Thomas students and staff bring with them every day, but may not be immediately visible.
The mural remains in place on the St. Thomas campus and community members are encouraged to engage with it.
To learn more, click here.
