Justice Page Middle School students in Elissa Cedarleaf Dahl’s mural class collaborated last school year with students in Puerto Rico and exchanged mural panels based on their shared vision for the project.
“Perseverance, Adaptability, Resistance” is a collaborative mural produced by students at Justice Page Middle School and Pablo Casals Fine Arts School in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, led by teacher Alenis Torres.
“We shared our ideas, shared parts about our lives, critiqued each other's designs and then ultimately painted sections of each other's murals,” Cedarleaf Dahl said.
The students would meet over Zoom and, in some cases, the students sent things back-and-forth via snail mail.
“We were able to send the fabric that we paint the mural on, in the mail,” Cedarleaf Dahl said.
The mural that has a home in Minneapolis was displayed at the John B. Davis Center this summer and was permanently installed at the Justice Page Middle School cafeteria in early November.
Cedarleaf Dahl traveled to Bayamón in June to help the students install their mural and in a few months will be traveling to Medellín, Colombia as a Fulbright scholar to study street art.
