Being young means sleeping over at a friend’s house, chatting about secret crushes and daydreaming about celebrities.

But for some youths in Syracuse, it means getting in the middle of violent situations.

In response to local violence, five students from the Creative Arts Academy, Portuguese artist Ricardo Gouveia and art instructor Arthur Brangman met at the basement of downtown’s The Warehouse Gallery to work on a mural to promote nonviolence in the Syracuse area.

Between Nov. 15 and Nov. 19, the group created a 17-foot by 7-foot mural depicting images of men behind bars, guns and a chalk outline of a body, and the finished visual is currently on display outside of the Community Folk Art Center.

‘Wow, those are some emotional visuals,’ Na-hyun Kim, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said when she heard of what was sketched on the mural. ‘It really makes you think about violence. Before, the topic never really occurred in my mind.’

In 2008, the Syracuse Peace Council, a community-based social justice organization, reported that in 18 out of the 25 local murders that occurred that year, the victims and the perpetrators were under the age of 25.

The coordinator of the Creative Arts Academy, Ty Marshal, said he was excited about the project. ‘We are pleased that our visual art students were able to work on a mural reflecting local violence,’ he said. ‘Our goal is to respond to these issues visually.’

Kiri Rowan, a sophomore art photography major, knew nothing about local violence until she came across the mural. As a student worker at The Warehouse Gallery, she was able to see the progress of the mural. Rowan said she learned more about violence in Syracuse through the visual.

Besides bringing a powerful message to the community, the mural was also therapeutic for the students. It gave the students a venue to express their bottled-up emotions.

‘I think it is definitely a positive approach,’ said Ann Koh, a senior in Arts and Sciences. ‘I guess the visuals can draw more people to become aware of the horrible youth violence in our city.’

ekim13@syr.edu

Published on November 30, 2010 at 12:00 pm