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."
The mural depicts a garden with lizards, butterflies and dozens of other animals moving through tall grass. The group started in June, and it was a total collaborative process. The technique Bradley-Shoup used - called Exquisite Corpse - is meant to get everybody involved. Somebody painted a form, and passed it to the next person who added a form, and so on.
Each creature has distinction. The hummingbird has sharp, defined strokes, while polka dots pepper another creature. Bradley-Shoup loves the finished mural's abstraction, and Salazar found playing with the different colors interesting.
"Like they said," Salazar said, pointing to the flower. It's a collection of vibrant, flowing lines that pops off the green background. "If you put a dark color with a light color around it, the light color will stick out more."
Contact staff writer Evan Hoopfer at ehoopfer@timesfreepress.com or @EvanHoopfer on Twitter or 423-757-6731.