A community mural is beautiful, exciting, invigorating, and a benefit to all! Starting on July 1, 2008, muralist Lydia Stein has begun establishing a team that can work together to make one or more murals happen in Fall River starting with one based on the history of the Quequechan River. Having created more than a dozen murals—on stores, a homeless shelter, a school, a community garden, an alternative dwelling, a restaurant, a YMCA, and a public library—over the past five years, most of them in Worcester, MA, Currently she is enrolled in the Resumed Undergraduate Education Program at Brown University, working toward a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts. Her most recent mural project, with Annie Hayes in New Bedford, involved at-risk teens in every stage of the creation of a large-scale urban mural, which they accomplished, down to washing the last paintbrush, in only 15 total workdays. Ms. Stein has set her sights on creating a team of young people in Fall River to create a series of murals over the next few years. "I've already started to investigate some possible walls for the mural," she said. "But we can identify some other walls that we like, find the building owners, and ask for permission." Stein is hoping to fund the project through donations of paint, scaffolding and other equipment to complete at least one project this summer. She would also like to pay teens a stipend for their time, though that is not a requirement if she can find enough of them who would work unpaid. "We are working on this because we love public art, and because we believe in the great potential of collaborative work." For more information on the project or to donate to the project, contact Lydia Stein at 401-286-5858.
 

(Top row, left) Muralist Lydia Stein describes her proposed project to about a dozen people who gathered at Arts Express (formerly Baker Bookstore) next to the Cherry & Webb Gallery on South Main Street. (Top row, center) One of last summer's ArtWorks! murals that Ms. Stein directed in New Bedford last summer was shown as an example of what can be done. (Top row, right, from back to front) America's Promise Fellow Ine Ogagan, Ron Cabral, Caitlin Botelho and Ana Starcher look at slides of a number of Stein's projects. (Middle row, left) City Councilor Steve Camara offers some suggestions on researching images from Fall River's past that could be incorporated into a mural. (Middle row, right) B.M.C. Durfee High School students Ana and Caitlin express their interest in working on the project. (Bottom row, left) Art administrator Patrice Cloutier suggests some community leaders who might be willing to provide resources and support for the project as Eileen Raposa and her daughter, Kelsey, listen. (Bottom row, center) At 18 years of age, Ms. Stein created her first mural with local youth, “Mas Alla de la Ciudad,” on a Spanish Foods Store wall on Main Street in Worcester, MA. (Bottom row, right) Eric Sychampanakhone and Tenisha Ferreira listen as Jordan Pereira offers some of his ideas for possible mural locations in Fall River.