FORT SMITH -- In a city full of murals, the latest wall-sized painting called for a team effort.
Nearly 20 young artists between the ages of 10 and 17 from several area schools participated last week in the four-day Become a Muralist art camp hosted by the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum. During the camp, the group toured the many murals decorating the exteriors of downtown buildings and learned about the process behind creating such large-scale artworks. They then put brushes to wall and created their own mural inside the museum's studio.
Daleana Vaughan, education director for the museum, said she was inspired to host a summer art camp about murals after revisiting the many large-scale wall paintings around Fort Smith, most of which were created by world-famous artists as part of 64.6 Downtown's ongoing The Unexpected project.
And when it came time to select a lead instructor for the camp, there was one name at the top of the list.
"Stacy Bates, she's our teacher, and she has done murals in the past, and she also does a RAM sketch class online," Vaughan said.
Bates is a teacher at Woods Elementary School and a muralist with works at multiple sites around Fort Smith and beyond.
"She knew about the murals probably better than I did," Vaughan said.
Bates said the original goal was to use a tour of the city's murals downtown on Tuesday to inspire campers to create their own mural design -- but time constraints meant they'd have to use one of her own creations. After showing everyone a concept of an art supply box with the museum logo bursting open with the markings of a yellow pencil, pink pen and blue crayon, campers got to work that afternoon stenciling the design against the downstairs studio wall.
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"What is something that we could add to this classroom that would add to it and be an accent to the artwork that they display down there?" Bates said of the design process, which underwent minor changes throughout the week. "At first, it was going to be black and white because they have so many colorful artworks that they bring in and out of there, that they didn't want it to be too overwhelming.
"By the end of the week, we kind of talked about, 'Yeah, it would look really cool if we just had a couple pops of color.'"
The final touch once the work was complete Friday -- each camper got to sign their name to the wall.
"Getting to pass that knowledge onto them and having a group of kids that were really excited about it and were really working well together was pretty inspiring to see as an art teacher and as an artist myself," Bates said. "Getting to see their faces when they step back at the end of the week and see them go, 'Yeah, I did that, that's my artwork, it's part of what I've done, I accomplished that,' is really nice."
The studio, like the museum galleries, is open to the public for those interested in viewing the new mural in person.
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