Erase the Space mural unveiled in Whitehall

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Erase the Space mural unveiled in Whitehall

Painting made by students from Bexley and Columbus City Schools

Fourth-grade students from Bexley's Cassingham Elementary School and Columbus' Shady Lane Elementary School met recently at John Bishop Park in Whitehall to celebrate the unveiling of a mural they completed together. The mural is the culmination of a five-month project supported by Erase the Space, a local program that connects students and teachers from different schools and backgrounds.

"This is the first time y'all have seen the mural, right?" Terron Banner, director of Urban Arts Space at The Ohio State University, asked the students before teachers pulled down the cover. They could barely contain their enthusiasm, all shouting "Yes!"

Students from both schools supplied the designs. Banner and the Urban Arts Space team facilitated much of the work, including scanning and arranging student drawings into the larger painting, which was then split into halves.

Rainbows, joined hands, flowers, ice cream, and more covered the brightly colored mural, as did words like "kindness," "honesty" and "responsibility." Students were eager to point out their own contributions.

"I painted the people," said Akari Campbell, a Shady Lane student. "I love painting."

"There's two ice cream cones with a ring around them like Saturn," said Gwen Gigliello, a Cassingham student. "I painted those."

Akari was looking forward to bringing her parents to the mural. They're excited to see it, she said.

She was not the only one ready to show off their hard work. Gwen said she couldn't wait to come back.

"I'm going to show my whole family," Gwen said. "I'm going to have people come in from where they live and come here."

The mural is the product of a larger process, Banner said. Staff from Urban Arts Space and Erase the Space guided conversations with the students about how they saw the world.

"We had prompts every week and they would share their ideas about their community, about fairness, about responsibility … hardships, too. When something's not fair, what do you do? We started putting that into a visual language. What does it look like to be happy? What does it look like to be fair, to be kind?"

Combining the halves, each painted by a different school, made the metaphor real, Banner said.

"We're literally erasing the space between both proximity and distance but also between different communities, different cultures, different identities and different personalities."

Melissa Hohenberger, art teacher at Shady Lane, was happy to see how quickly the students bonded.

"When we met for the first time, we met at the library and talked, did some initial drawings," she said. "After we left, the kids talked about wanting to meet up again and missing their new friends."

Gwen remembered feeling nervous when she met her partner.

"My partner was shy and I was shy, but then we slowly started to come together," she said. "I asked how old she was, if she had any pets. She asked me the same."

Banner hopes that the students hold on to the lessons they learned from the experience.

"Working together, this collaboration and community, I think, builds bonds and that's really the importance of this," he said. "Whatever they may do in their future, whether it be through high school, college, their career paths - maybe they're artists, maybe they're politicians - collaboration and community are central things."

Community engagement projects like this are fundamental, Banner said, both to Urban Arts Space and Ohio State as a whole.

"It's part of our responsibility, right?" he said. "We are a land-grant university. We have a responsibility to the community."

Michael T. Bivens, Whitehall's mayor, agreed. He learned about the unveiling just that morning and immediately added it to his schedule.

"I couldn't help but to come support our young people," he said. "I'm not surprised that Ohio State is involved in this. They're a great community partner. I'm never surprised that they're involved."

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