The Artist’s Round is a new art program where one artist is chosen by Mr. Duarte, Ms. Bradley, and Ms. Allen every month to create a piece of artwork in any style that they feel resonates with themselves and can impact the community. This month’s artist is Henry Buckley-Jones.
Henry’s choice of artwork differs from what comes to mind when thinking about art. He wants to try and create a mural. Why a mural? Henry says that he initially became interested in the project as a way to be more engaged with the arts at Belmont Hill. As a new student, Henry wanted to make a big impression on the Belmont Hill community, and a mural seemed like the best way to achieve that, due to his previous experience with large-scale artwork and spray painting.
The process of creating a mural is much more methodical than most would think. According to Henry, “I’m definitely going to draw heavily on my previous experience creating one.” His artistic process starts with a sketch, which is just an outline of what the final mural will look like. There are actually several of these sketches, he will finalize the one he likes the most and the lines will be refined. After that, he likes to scan the line art and make many copies so he can play around with different colors and textures for the different parts of the mural. Once that’s done, he has to buy all the spray paint, background paint, and other materials he will need. After he has all the materials, he will start by using a roller and several buckets of paint on the wall, as “it’s important to get solid colors in for the background and general big shapes of everything.” After that, he will use a color of spray paint that will blend in well but is not the same color to draw the line art on the wall. This process can take up to a day. Once that is done, he moves on to the last step of filling in the colors of the mural from background to foreground. However, after he finishes, he will come back a few more times with fresh eyes because “with such a large canvas, the first time you are bound to miss some things or make some mistakes, so a second look is crucial.”
For the content of the mural, Henry is thinking of making a scene depicting a lone firefighter in a burning forest. The flames twist up around him and a fiery snake-like dragon twists down towards him. The thumbnails he worked on all had themes of a contrast between a human element (for example, the firefighter), and an animal representation of nature (for example, the forest fire in the shape of a dragon).
The mural also contains a deeper meaning. Henry wants the mural to tell the story of humanity’s incompetence when it comes to interacting with and taking care of the natural world. The firefighter in his mural is deliberately small compared to the dragon, and the water he shoots completely misses. This interaction is supposed to emphasize how futile our sparse efforts have been to take care of nature and fight the things that harm it. However, the portrayal of fire as a part of nature instead of something alien to it also gives a double meaning. Forest fires can also be good if they occur naturally, as they clean the forest floor of debris, open it up to sunlight, and nourish the soil. However, Henry thinks that “at the end of the day it’s up to the viewer to interpret, but I like to think it could go either way.”
Henry also wants to use this mural to emphasize society’s inability to control many aspects of nature. Fire is a big part of this. He wants to show that nature is just as unpredictable as fire: “Maybe that’s scary, maybe it’s comforting, but I really want to make it stand out. The overwhelming nature of the flames should really stand out and convey my message well.”
When asked about what inspired him to choose the topic of his mural to be humanity’s treatment of nature, he said that he started by thinking about climate change, as it is a very big issue in the world today. He thought about some of the impacts or issues that he could draw attention to, and the first image that came to mind was the huge forest fires that have been happening all over the world, most notably in Australia and California. He wanted to show the heroism of not only the firefighters but also the double-sided nature of the fire. Another factor he took into account was whether or not the mural would be able to catch people’s attention. A bright, fiery mural would be perfect for this job.
When asked about what step in this process was his favorite, he said that his favorite part was working on finalizing his sketch design. He loves being able to see his idea turn from a tiny thumbnail into a much larger, more detailed sketch and then finally transform it into an array of colors. He is very grateful to Mr. Duarte, Ms. Bradley, and Ms. Allen for choosing him for this project, as it gave him an opportunity to draw and make a mural, which he is deeply passionate about, while also giving him the freedom to choose any topic, allowing him to pick the topic of climate change and nature, which he feels very strongly about.
