Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 10/16/15. Mark Bardley-Shoup speaks about a new mural titled “Pollinators” on Friday, October 16, 2015 that he contributed to at Hope for the Inner City in East Chattanooga. Christian Salazar, 16, was skeptical when he began painting. He’d never done anything like this before.
“I thought it was going to be boring,” he said. “And then once I started painting and realizing how the colors stick out, I liked it a lot.”
Salazar was one of 10 teenage boys who were recognized Friday for their work on the new mural at 1800 Roanoke Ave. The finished product, called “Pollinators,” stretches about 100 feet along a fence and stands 4 feet high. Mark Making partnered with Hope for the Inner City to create the project.
Mark Bradley-Shoup, a lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga art department, was the lead artist for “Pollinators.” Usually he works with college students. But for this, he oversaw several boys who had never picked up a paintbrush before.
“I was a little nervous,” he said. “It made me teach differently, it made me think differently. It challenged me in totally different ways.”