Client: City of Stockton

Overview

The Grant was made up of several community components. A mural that includes student artwork, workshops, and final display of student artwork and Flip book animations at the Fair Oaks Library. The mural is about the power of reading that fuels creativity and imagination. The Grant was awarded to the artist by the Stockton Arts Commission.

Goals

An octopus was chosen as it has three hearts and nine brains and symbolically represents complexity, diversity, intelligence, vision and insight. The octopus now fills the curved wall near the entrance of the library and its colorful legs span around the wall holding and reading multiple books. Out of the octopus’s hat emerges the creativity and imagination machine. The mechanisms represent the influence of reading as the fuel for the machine, celebrating ideas of creativity and imagination. Above the legs of the octopus a highlighted mechanism area or “cog” around each book will represent the imagination of a book. Several of these “cog” visual elements were taken directly from selected artwork from Fair Oaks area student art submissions.

Process

The mural is a celebration of the diversity of Stockton, CA. Students submitted artwork for 6 areas of the mural. The artist additionally held flipbook animation workshops through out the Fair Oaks Community.

Additional Information

Multiple workshops were held in the Fair Oaks area, teaching students the magic of Flip book animation. Thank you to the Stockton Arts Commission for the selection of this project and Blackwing for their generous donation to supply students with their fabulous pencils. And a huge thank you to the Stockton community for their positivity and support of this project and the hope that it produces more projects for the community in the near future.