culture

Mural in progress

Artist Mark Nelson returned to Panama this summer to apprentice seven high school students from El Valle de Anton in the creation of a public mural for El Valle Elementary School. The mural was based on numerous drawings created by El Valle elementary students featuring the natural landscape of the community. This project was initiated by El Valle resident Maritza Urriola, an artists also known as Kiki Taylor, who began an art club for the El Valle Elementary students and collaboration with Mark Nelson's art students in Chicago using the Internet as a medium of international exchange. The seven young muralists working under Nelson are learning many techniques employed by the artist in his Chicago studio and classroom. Nelson, a former resident of the Canal Zone and Panama City, began his formal studies in the arts at the Canal Zone College, then studied at the Universidad Nacional de Panama and Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas before he graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his Masters from the University of Illinois in Chicago's School of Art and Architecture. His six meter wide by 2 meter high painted mural, Jesus Lizard on the Banana Channel, was purchased and installed last year by the US State Department's Art in Embassies Program in the US Embassy of Clayton, Panama.