ABOUT

This website documents the creative process behind the North Carolina environmental justice mural produced by Dr. Garcia Peacock's environmental studies course: "Art, Activism, and the Environment." The mural is located on the second floor of the Watson building at Davidson College.

Throughout the course, we looked at works of various mediums produced by artists of all types, with a specific focus on Latinx artists. The themes of activism and the environment were common in the art we looked at.

Through exposure to a multitude of works, like The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence, the Washed Up Series by Alejandro Duran, and Los Olvidados by Ramiro Gomez to name a few, we expanded our artistic scope and covered a wide range of artistic movements. Scholarly readings accompanied the works to inform our knowledge and understanding of them.

We drew much inspiration from mural case studies, looking at Detroit Industry by Diego Rivera, New Democracy by David Alfaro Siqueiros, and The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judy Baca, among others.

Whether looking at photography, interactive museum displays, cardboard cutouts, gardens, performance pieces, paintings, online graphics, or trash-turned-art, we were challenged to analyze each piece in terms of its aesthetic content and our individual interpretations of its message.

The collectively created mural represents the culmination of all of our studies and our growth as environmental justice scholars and as artists.