The mural was completed in five days using stencils. The elephant, camel, butterfly, duck and cloud stencils were made in the USA by an Idaho company.  The stencils of the three women, I fabricated in my studio in Pasadena. The mural is approximately thirty feet long extending from Hindi prayer panels on two sidewalls and along the entire north wall of the small one story stone building.  Height of the mural is approximately seven feet high and sits above a three-foot high chalkboard surface to be used by the young children for teaching and learning.

The team consisted of five service corps members: Andrea Clark, a medical writer for Genentech, from Oakland California; Celia Cowles, a middle school student, from Austin, Texas traveling with her parents; Lily Lee, a former assistant to Mayor Tom Bradley of LA and now Public Affairs Manager at Los Angeles Waste Management,  from South Pasadena, CA; Raquel Libman, an attorney for the Miami Heat, from Miami Beach, FL; and Jamie Nicholson, a Latin American research analyst, from New York City. None of these team members had experience painting a mural.  Many young ladies from the Rajmata Krishna Kumari Girls Public School assisted the team.  They included: Vinod Choudhary, Deepika Singhal, and several others who appeared on the final day to lend a hand.  Mukta Soman from the American Field Service was an important member of the team. She and Celia did the high work on the wall. The students also had no experience painting a mural.  Although years ago I worked on a mural for the Los Angeles Artist Housing Corporation, I had done nothing of this size since.

The women took over and did a great job. I was allowed to sit on my stool in my white painter’s suit and direct the work, which required a great deal of on-site adjustment given the fact that my design had to be moved from the original wall it was created for, and the wall height and window conditions were different from what I estimated. Raquel said I got to play Matisse, who had his coterie of assistants placing his cutouts for his big paper creations, when he was too old and decrepit to paint himself.  Although the project’s oldest participant, yet feeling not that old, but appreciating the confidence my team had in me, I got to stand back and directed the placement of the stencils -– “move that duck up to left beside the cloud,” for example –- and I altered the team’s choices of the colors on the three women. I did get to do some final painting of the outlines so they looked correct.

Mukta, Deepika, Vinod, with several RKK girls I didn’t know, Celia, and Raquelput the finishing touches on the mural.  Lily was mixing paint. Jaime was working on the sidewall, while I was standing at the back marveling at the harmonious teamwork.

Each member of the team painted her own customization of an elephant, camel or butterfly stencil. Melissa Reinberg, a mediator and law professor from Washington, DC, was one of leaders of the Kakelao service corps project. She painted a camel stencil to become a blue robed YASC dromedary.  Deborah Rose, an epidemiologist from Maryland, who worked on last year’s mural, but her work below the chalk line was erased, embellished a large blue elephant to the left of the window. Everyone, who participated in this year’s mural, added something of her own. In this way the mural was truly a team effort, where everyone could own the outcome. I was honored by the team and am very happy with the results.