Tri-Cities youth to paint peace mural

The painting is about 12 feet tall and 26 feet wide — a gray, black and white masterpiece depicting a bloody bombing during the Spanish Civil War.

It’s by Pablo Picasso and it’s called Guernica. And it’s arguably the most powerful anti-war painting of all time.

Next week, young people in the Tri-Cities will create their own mural inspired by Picasso’s classic work.

It will have the same dimensions and center on the theme of “Peace.”

The timing is good with all that’s happened in the community and the world in recent days and months, said Yichien Cooper, a Washington State University Tri-Cities professor who is helping organize the mural project. “I hope we will be able to evoke seeds of peace,” she said.

It’ll be created by young artists from the Urban Poets Society, with guidance from participants in an art education workshop happening next week at the WSU Tri-Cities campus.

Jordan Chaney, Urban Poets Society’s founder, said he jumped at the chance to have his group involved with the mural.

“It’s necessary and important, especially in the climate we’re in now, for youth to have older people engage them in such a worthwhile, peace-themed project,” he said.

The mural is part of the Kids Guernica program, in which young people around the world create paintings the size of Guernica that are centered on peace.

More than 160 murals have been painted in 40 countries through the program, its website says.

It grew out of a children’s peace mural exchange between the U.S. and Japan to mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Tom Anderson, an acclaimed art education professor and author, was one of the co-founders. He’ll be in the Tri-Cities to help with the workshop.

Tri-Citians will be able to get their first glimpse of the mural during a multicultural potluck at 5 p.m. July 21 at Howard Amon Park in Richland.

Called The Melting Pot Luck, Chaney organized it as a way to build bridges and bonds across the Tri-Cities. Admission is free; people are asked to bring a dish to share.

The art education workshop happening in concert with the mural project is called Think, Create, and Teach. It runs July 18-22 at WSU Tri-Cities and aims to “assist participants to see, interpret, respond, and act upon visual encounters in life to rekindle inner creativity, to become a visual thinker, a critical thinker and creative problem solver.”

Cooper and other WSU Tri-Cities faculty are set to teach, and Anderson will speak. For details, go to tinyurl.com/wsuartworkshop.

The mural painting will happen as the workshop is under way, with students working in WSU Tri-Cities’ art gallery.

Chaney said he sees the mural and the potluck as sources of positivity.

“Right now, there’s so much tension and ferocious debate about Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. A negative thing happens and people weigh in on it. Right away, division happens. Then a negative thing happens. People weigh in. Division again,” he said.

But art, a multicultural social gathering — “These kinds of things enrich and bring people together,” he said.

This story was originally published July 14, 2016 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Tri-Cities youth to paint peace mural."