Painting.

Wisconsin artist, Peter Krsko, spent Spring Break 2019 at Dane County Juvenile Court Shelter Home to engage teen residents in the design and production of a mural inside their dining room.

Peter's work is grounded in science education and the students were interested in the blown up microscopic images he's done for group mural projects in the past. Because this mural was going into the Shelter's dining room, the group decided a food theme was fitting and they spent time brainstorming ideas around microscopic food representations, thinking about foods that would break down into different shapes and textures as well as picking favorite foods and colors. 

Students used a microscope to view the foods that rose to the top of the discussion on the first day, and then began to create stencils by projecting and tracing their microscopic views onto large poster board. For the remainder of the week, students continued to create and use these type of stencils to strategically populate the wall space. Throughout the week, some students took breaks from the mural to use their new skill set to create new stencils for a personal project on canvas that they could keep.

Made possible with the financial support from: 

Over a two week period during Spring 2018, teaching artist, Carlos Gacharna, engaged teenage residents at the Dane County Juvenile Reception Center in a mural design project. Carlos lead workshops on cultural pattern design, with a peer vote helping to choose the final designs to be used for the intake corridor murals. Over the course of the residency, teens and Bubbler crew painted the hallway and the inside of both temporary intake holding cells used by the JRC upon arriving to the facility.

After finishing the project and taking in the view from one of the two intake cells, both coated with some bright new murals, Carlos reflects with a simple statement, “I can’t fix the system, but I can do my part to make it a little more bearable...the least I can do is bring a little humanity to their experience.”  

Thanks to Carlos & the detention administration, a new welcome awaits all future arrivals! 

A week-long residency at Dane County Juvenile Court Shelter Home was the perfect amount of time for Carlos Gacharna to drop some knowledge on the diaspora of fashionable patterns and colors, and the people and locations from which they originate, as a starting point for understanding and experimenting with different forms of personal designs and pattern making. 

The Shelter classroom mural was the culminating project.

Read more about Carlos's time as a Making Justice Artist-In-Residence.

"Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.” 

— Maya Angelou

During a month-long residency over Summer Break 2017, local teaching artists Lesley Anne Numbers and Lauden Nute worked with teens at the Dane County Juvenile Detention Center to transform a long wall in the narrow hallway between the visitation room and their daily space. Leslie and Lauden presented the concepts behind mural design and worked with students to generate ideas and themes relevant to their feelings and experiences.

They handed out markers and a stack of note cards to students and court officers, and began asking basic questions about how they experience that hallway through their 5 senses before, during and after walking from the detention space towards the visitation space, and vice versa. Lesley and Lauden took individual notes but also collected all of the note cards, and took them home in order use these responses while designing the mural on a laptop.

Lesley and Lauden came back with some draft designs were able to offer feedback and suggestions before transforming the hallway. Over the next 3 weeks, the teens used pencils and marker to transfer the design to the wall, and then paint and outline the entire design.

We were not able to capture sharable footage of the design process due to the angles of the hallway.

The Well of Being is an exercise in metaphor, created through a process of engaging and visualizing all five of our five senses to describe the gymnasium inside Dane County Juvenile Detention Center. During a one-week residency over Spring Break, local artist Chris Maddox worked with students at the facility to transform the giant wall opposite the doorway.

Chris came in on the Thursday afternoon before break to generate ideas and themes with teen residents. After a brief introduction to himself and his trajectory as an learner and artist, Chris laid some basic groundwork by working with the group to define the concept of metaphor. He then handed out a pencil and a stack of note cards to each teen, and began offering prompts in which they had 30-60 seconds to write or draw the first thing that comes to mind. He used prompts like "Please describe the smell when you first walk into the gymnasium", or "What animal do you feel like when you are working out in the gym", or "What does power look like?". Chris then collected all of the note cards, took them home, and laid them out in one large grid on his floor and desk in order to soak in their feedback while designing the mural on his laptop.

The following Monday morning, Chris came back to the facility where we projected his design on the gym wall for both the teen residents and the detention administrators and staff to offer feedback and move on to the next step. Over the next 6 days, the teens used pencils to trace the design as it was projected on the wall and then paint and outline the entire wall. Due to the nature of the facility, teen residents are only housed on a temporary basis so there were some kids that took part in every session, but also kids that were only there for the beginning or the end of the project.

During a one-week residency over winter break, local artist Rodrigo Carapia worked with students at the detention center to transform a giant wall in the visitation room. 

Sunny Horizons was designed and created by former students who wanted to their family, friends, and advocates to experience the brilliance and resilience that is thriving within these walls. 

This was the first of many mural projects at the detention center, and this space was chosen due to its importance to staying connected to our community.