Meet Kayla Bouazouni '22, a PMA major, Fine Arts minor who created the mural in the Helen Ann Mattin green room. Kayla talks about working with PMA faculty and staff to create the piece. A transcript of the interview can be found below the video.
Kayla:
Hello, my name is Kayla. I'm a PMA major, Fine Arts minor. I'm a senior graduating in spring 2022, and I grew up in France, but I'm originally from Orlando, Florida.
So last semester I took senior thesis one with Austin Bunn, and he mentioned in passing that they were looking in the department to maybe do a mural for the building.
So I asked him about it and he told me to get in contact with Jason Simms, who luckily also was one of my professors for senior studio and asked me for sketches of what I would like to do, maybe, which I did digitally and sent out.
And he in consultation with the department chose which one would look best and then just gave me the green light to start the project.
I was put in contact with Tim Ostrander who is the props master here. And he had everything ready for me.
I printed my original drawing on a mylar piece of paper, which is transparent so we could project it on the wall and I could trace it with pencil.
And then the colors were mixed by Tim to meet as close as possible to the digital drawing. And then I just filled in the colors…really.
It took around maybe I would say two weeks in total. It was really quick and efficient. I'm very happy to be able to leave a trace in the PMA department as small or big as it is.
So this is really a great way to do that. And it makes me proud to see it every day. Because this is the biggest project I've done so far.
I'd never done a mural before. So as someone who spends a lot of time in the building, as you can imagine, and I love to show it off to the, my fellow students and going in and out, I take a lot of inspiration from other artists, notably like George Condo, Jacob Lawrence, Matisse. And so I feel like I use a lot of that in my art, notably like big shapes, bold colors.
I also hope that it energizes the room because I know a lot of people come in and out. This is where students study, where they wait for class and it just brings in energy to have this here. So I hope it's a lighthearted addition to the room.
