Focusing on Ukraine
by Ramona DiFrancesco
In response to what’s been going on in Ukraine, Professor Sara Ringler’s Drawing II students took the opportunity to create an artistic approach.
Ringler asked her students to bring in photos they had seen in the media depicting the war in Ukraine. The class ultimately decided to use a photo coming from a wire service of a woman in a red hat walking in front of a building that had just been bombed. The project was for each student to take a square section of that photo to draw using charcoal. The squares were then put together to create the mural and complete the photo of the woman in the red hat.
The class then took yellow and blue ribbons to suspend from either side of the mural, along with yellow and blue pieces of paper, to allow anyone who wants to write down how they feel to do so. This is to represent the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag.
“I was very proud of different aspects of it,” Ringler says.” Obviously from a drawing teacher’s standpoint, the drawing skill of being able to take something that small and enlarge it very quickly, and the textures and the value. And then how it pretty much all matched up -- they kind of surprised themselves.”
Ringler says her students rose to the occasion and were ready to do something to express some of their feelings about the tragedies happening in Ukraine.
“It’s staggeringly strong in the fact that… just these marks on paper create this cacophony of broken windows and crumbling buildings, and then the person who was walking in front of it all, with maybe a shopping bag in her hand or something, is just this metaphor for everybody,” Ringler says. “She’s this alone, elderly it seems, person, who is just walking down the street in front of this devastating background of shattered windows and crumbling buildings and broken trees and hanging balconies…
“It takes your breath away to think of such devastation in this time of humanity. In front of this building where lots of people used to live, and lots of people used to dream, and lots of people used to eat, there’s just this empty lone figure walking in front of it. It’s where the power of an image just takes your breath away.”
Students with their carefully crafted mural
Photo taken by Sara Ringler
Ringler says there wasn’t much discussion going on while she and the students worked on their individual squares, but it only took them one class period to complete the mural and hang it up.
“When we put it up,” Ringler says, “everybody was astounded how it looked and how it fit together. And even though they were working separately, it was more powerful than individuals, and that’s another metaphor, I think… to accomplish that collectively, and have it resonate so deeply.”
The mural is on display outside of the studio theater in the Tilden Arts Center. The students who participated include Jason Correira, Deirdre Morgan, Lily Rosenberg, Oshan Jones, Grace Sanford, Lauren Gordon, Adrianna Williams, Emily Silva, and Maddie Rubin.
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