[via omjp]

With Guest Mural Artists: Susan Greene and Lisa Nessan
The Olympia Center, 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Saturday, January 26th, The Olympia-Rafah Mural Project presents a full day of workshops led by a team of artists and community members for Olympia residents and artists. Workshops will focus on developing themes and design ideas for a mural to be painted in downtown Olympia later this year honoring connections between Olympia and the town of Rafah in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The mural will be an expression of a people’s recognition of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City connection. It will honor that relationship and, also, the common struggles for justice and the hidden histories that impact members of this community. Saturday’s workshops will be from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm, at The Olympia Center, 222 Columbia St. NW, in downtown Olympia. A light lunch will be provided.

Artists Susan Greene and Lisa Nessan of Break the Silence Mural Project in the San Francisco Bay Area, will share their work painting murals in the United States and in Palestine and discuss the power of mural art to spark action for social justice. They will provide guidance for the Olympia-Rafah Mural Project and help create a foundation for the elements of the final mural image. They will, also, address the public mural painting process as a tool for human rights advocacy through education and creation of a culminating mural celebration. Saturday’s workshops will include creative breakout sessions, exploration of proposed mural themes, a visit to the wall site, assembling images, and working with art materials to conceptualize and gather preliminary sketches for the mural.

The workshops will provide local artists a unique opportunity to learn about the process of painting a collaborative public mural as they, also, learn more about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict within the framework of human rights and art.

The free events are sponsored by The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, and The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project. For more information call (360) 754-3998 or email mural@rachelcorriefoundation.org .