If you’ve spent enough time in downtown Chapel Hill, you may have noticed the colorful artwork that is displayed on a few of the bus shelters around town. These pieces are a part of a project the town’s Office of Community Arts and Culture put together to enliven some of the spots that the community encounters every day.
East’s Art Appreciation Club has now carried this idea into our school’s own community.
“Our club had a meeting with the Chapel Hill Community Arts and Culture and they shared a lot of examples of bus shelter artwork throughout Chapel Hill. We thought, there’s a bus stop at our school and it’s not really decorated, so why not decorate it?” junior Lan Gao said.
The bus shelter sits off to the side of the bus parking lot, usually decorated with students’ paper scraps and a couple of no-smoking stickers. Now the shelter displays panels of bright designs, crafted by the members of the club.
“This bus shelter artwork consists of three different panels, but with a coherent theme,” Gao said. “We wanted to represent plants and nature, in connection to people. The idea is that first there’s a seed, and it sprouts and grows into a fully grown tree. The style is fantastical, metaphysical, and a bit supernatural.”
The piece, named “Growth of Life,” was first designed in a digital medium by the club members on iPads using digital illustration software Procreate. After the designs were finalized, the art was printed by Chapel Hill’s Office of Community Arts and Culture and stuck onto the back of the glass bus shelter.
The design features three separated panels, primarily designed by three different club members.
“It starts with a seed, you can see the growth with a good background, with a fresh start. There are some worms around it, like a foreshadowing of future obstacles,” Gao said.
The second panel displays the next stage of life, with the start of a tree growing.
From left to right: Lan Gao, Richia Liu
Photo by Lili Gayton/The ECHO“It’s more peaceful, it’s a stage where you have more inner thoughts about yourself, deciding how you want to grow, and in which direction you want to grow,” sophomore and club member Richia Liu said.
“The last panel is volcanoes that erupt, and the tree, instead of dying or being burned, rises,” Gao said. “The tree absorbs the nutrients; there are actually a lot of nutrients in lava. It symbolizes the growth of the tree when facing obstacles, that we’ve made achievements out of the obstacles.”
The Art Appreciation club is one of the newer clubs at East, founded during the pandemic and virtual school.
“The club was started last year by our presidents Andrea Wang and Jenny Hu,” Gao said. “We do monthly meetings, but because of COVID we haven’t really been in person. This is the first in-person big project. Online we had meetings about introducing various aspects of art; we did poems, literature, art history this year, and we did music.”
Liu said, “This year I don’t think that the East art team has been very active, so I feel like Art Appreciation [Club] has helped fill that empty space, and just been a nice club if you like art and you want to help the school”.
The club, along with student government and the UNICEF club, recently raised $730 for the people of Ukraine through an artwork and bake sale. Club members say they aim to create an enlightened atmosphere through all of their works.
“We wanted to create this artwork as a positive message for the school,” Gao said. “That we grow, and there are some obstacles, there are areas for you to explore, and out of those we have to take advantage of opportunities, rise from obstacles, and bloom. Especially for us teenagers this year. As a junior, I’ve been through a lot of obstacles and I always try to cheer myself up to not be drowned in the lava”.
Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified the last name of club president Jenny Hu.
Featured image by Hammond Cole Sherouse/The ECHO
