SHERYL CROWLEY
Outreach Projects & Murals
"WE ARE ONE LIFE-Integration" Electrical Box Project 2023, Saint John, NB
Over a span of 2 weeks in May I was one of three professional artists working on a project to beautify some of the mundane electrical boxes in the Uptown of Saint John, NB.
The project theme was INTEGRATION in whichever way we chose to interpret it. My design-WE ARE ONE LIFE- celebrates the integration and interconnectedness of all living beings.
The box paintings was a collaboration between Uptown SJ, other city organizations and managed by artist Fabiola Martinez. High school art students also painted a box and celebration events happened at the end of the project with live entertainment and a huge chalk mural that I got to work on as well.
Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) 2022, Saint John, NB
“Día de los Muertos" is a Mexican festival happening around the end of October honouring the loved ones now dead. There are many cultural events and symbols connected to this time when it is thought the dead and living are at the closest point of meeting again.
The festival in Saint John, NB was organized by Mexican-Canadian artist, Fabiola Martinez. I was one of 8 artists invited to create paintings that bridged our lives and the Mexican tradition. The pieces were displayed under black light as part of the traditional altar. We created a chalk mural to draw viewers into the altar area.
"Always Close” 20”x20” acrylic
In my childhood my grandmother “Nanny” was my confidant. She was my warm place, champion of my causes and supporter of my burdens and explorations.
She died when I was 12, at a family home, collapsing in front of me and dying soon after.
I have always felt her near me, throughout my life. This painting is based upon a photo of the two of us taken when I was four years old. It hangs in my painting room, always.
The Carty Brothers of Saint John, NB- Forest Hills School 2023
This year I have been working with five classes of grade 6 students at Forest Hills school in East Saint John. They have been doing extensive research about 5 brothers from the Saint John Black community who all served in the 2nd World War and returned home again. My part in their discovering of Black history in the Saint john area was to create 5 individual portraits of these brothers - Gerald, Donald, William, Clyde and Adolphus Carty. We made acrylic skins and layered them onto 2ft.x.3ft. boards as backgrounds. I made a stencil for each portrait and the students took part in stenciling the images onto the collaged skins. I must say that they turned out pretty cool! The kids had a lot of fun creating the skins from poured acrylic paint and later peeling them of the plastic they were poured on. Remember pouring Elmer's school glue onto your hand as a kid and waiting for it to dry and peeling that off? Yup, same satisfaction but with lots of colour!
This Residency project was again funded through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government. Thank you!
In the Fall of 2021 I received funding through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government to work with middle school teens at Bayside Middle in Saint John. The idea behind the mosaic glass mural was to express in images the experiences of those students during the Pandemic. We started with discussions about what was difficult and some unexpected perks. One girls said she was happy that she could eat peanut butter sandwiches while doing her online classes! Ah the glass half full. What predominantly came out of our discussions was their lack of time with their friends and the isolation during lockdowns. The students generated images to represent aspects of their experiences and I took these and created 3 possible designs. The children went through a process of analyzing and commenting on the ideas and we eventually came to our final design of the 2 hands reaching out of bubbles, surrounded by Coronaviruses.
I spent time with two Grade 5 classes at Princess Elizabeth School over 2020-21. We got Covid stopped many times. We persevered though and the children experimented with learning how to transfer an image from a photo to their canvas using gridding and how to create shadows and form using shading. We took Mt. LeFoy, by Canadian Lawren Harris, as our painting to emulate.
This Residency was also funded through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government. Thank you!
Making a mosaic with bottle caps???? That was the School Residency I was contacted to take part in at École des Pionniers in Quispamsis in 2021. With funding through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government, we were all set. Thank you! The whole school had been collecting various colours and sizes of lids and caps for several years to raise awareness around recycling. (You can't recycle most caps). They wanted to make use of materials that would usually go to the landfill. We created a mosaic version of their school logo and it is now installed on the exterior of the school. That was a LOT OF CAPS.
My School Residencies during 2020-2021 got Covid stopped and started like everything else in the world then. One of my projects was at Milledgeville North school doing a large ceramic tile based mosaic. Thankfully the project deadlines were able to be extended through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government. Thank you!
The theme was celebrating MULTICULTURALISM. Their school has children from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Together we went through a design process where students brainstormed symbols and colours that would reflect them. Several ideas were done large and critiqued by them before the final design was decided. They used hand tools to cut ceramic tile to create the mosaic and also did the final grouting. This piece is waiting to be installed at the school.
In 2020-21 I was able to do a school residency at Belleisle Regional High School. This was funded through the Tourism, Heritage and Culture Dep. of the provincial government. Thank you! The theme was close to my heart- the welcoming and safe school environment for children and adults who identify as part of the LGBTQ2 community. The students brainstormed images that could convey this theme and we finally ended up with a beautiful image. The symbol for the high school is the adult bear. The elementary school mascot is the baby bear. In our stained glass mosaic the adult is protecting and loving it's baby. Beautiful. The students cut and ground the stained glass and did the grouting. It is hanging in their library permanently.
The COVID Experience Mural- Bayside Middle School 2021-2022
Painting at Princess Elizabeth 2020-2021
Multicultural Mosaic Mural- Millidgeville North 2020-2021
LGBTQ2 Stained Glass Mosaic- Belleisle Regional High 2020-2021
The students worked with pre-cut glass tile on individual squares of the design. That was then joined together and attached to mdf by me. This past winter we grouted the final piece. It is now waiting for framing. Seems we were so into doing the project that we forgot to take photos of the students! Must be some somewhere.... they did work hard!
Bottle Cap Mosaic Mural- École des Pionniers 2021
"A Community Of Caring"
ArtSmart Residency with Hazen-White Kindergarten Class Feb.-April 2019
In February of 2019 I began an ArtSmart Residency with a Kindergarten class at Hazen-White School in Saint John, with the collaboration of teacher Rhonda Magee. The school has a very diverse population, with many recent immigrant families and is also designated as a “priority Neighbourhood” within Saint John. Rhonda and I developed a mural project around the theme - A Community Of Caring - which would use silhouettes of the children arranged in a way to suggest relationships, community and coming together. The project wound up in mid-April after bi-weekly visits with the class over the preceding 2 months.
ARTrageous Festival
From 2013 to 2015 I took part in a Festival held each spring at the award winning KINGSBRAE GARDENS in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Children from all over the local school district come to the gardens and spend the day taking part in multiple mini art workshops with artists in the beautiful outdoor settings.
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Whale Legacy Project 2012
Disney cruise guests are having a “Whale of a Time” this summer as they help to create a one-of-a-kind work of art. The colourful Bay of Fundy Whale Mosaic, designed by local artist Sheryl Crowley, is a gift of public art from Aquila Tours that will be displayed in Saint John’s newest cruise terminal when it opens in early September.
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During the Whale of a Time Port Adventure, participants will paint their own design on a numbered ceramic tile. The tile number is recorded on a certificate for them to take home as a souvenir, and Sheryl Crowley will add the tiles to the mosaic throughout the summer. Participants can watch the progress and see where their tile is placed by clicking on the Whale Mosaic link .
The mosaic will be on display at the museum while it is being created, until it is moved to its permanent home at the new Diamond Jubilee Cruise Terminal.
The creation of the Bay of Fundy Whale Mosaic is a unique legacy project which celebrates Aquila’s 30th year in business and Disney Cruise Line’s first season in the Port of Saint John.
Boys & Girls Club "Home" 2012
This was a segment of a larger project that happened in the spring of 2012 across several community organizations and involving some of the children they serve. The project was to bring awareness of the varying concepts of "HOME" and to highlight the plans for a new teen homeless shelter to be built in Saint John, NB .
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St. Malachy's Project 2012
This project was done with the invitation and collaboration of Melinda Sheehan, art teacher at St. Malachy High and with the blessings of Yvon Gallant who kindly gave use permission to use his painting "homme avec homard" as the basis of our mosaic. See a VIDEO of the process here. We received a grant through the Government of New Brunswick to introduce an aspect of Acadian culture to anglophone students.
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M. Gallant is an Acadian painter living in Moncton whose works have been shown around the world and whose brilliant plains of colour made his works perfect for mosaic interpretation.
I worked with grade 12 art students some of whom were in an Advance Placement art program working at a university level in visual arts. I taught them how to use the tools and materials of mosaic making. We used nippers as well as learning to safely mixing and apply mortar and grout. Over 2 1/2 weeks the students went from a line drawing on the mdf board to grouting finally.
Tree Mural 2012
From the Baby Wing of the Saint John Early Childhood Centre you can see across to Garden Street. So that is what I painted on their wall with the addition of a large bare tree from which they could display baby artwork !
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Mur des bénévoles 2011
The "Mural of Volunteers" is designed to celebrate and highlight the individuals in the local francophone community who have given to their community as volunteers over the years of the centre. I was commissioned to create two 4x4ft. mosaic oak trees for this. The leaves of the tree will contain the names of the volunteers.
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Une communauté forte et vibrante se développe grâce à l'implication de personnes ayant le désire commun de la voir s'épanouir.
En reconnaissance de ces personnes, l'ARCf de Saint-Jean prépare un mur des bénévoles intégrant une œuvre de l'artiste Sheryl Crowley.
Snail Mural 2011
Once there was a very long, blank and cold and plain concrete Wall. It was one side of a long and blank and cold, and plain concrete Hallway. Every day the children had to walk down this hallway in order to arrive at the Dining Room where they were given scrumptious food to eat and they laughed and sang.
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The wall felt left out of this feasting. No matter how long it was, it could never actually get into the place where the food was served and the children ate and chattered together. The Hall ended where the Dining Room began, you see, and this made the Wall very lonely.
Sometimes when the children arrived to eat they would find water on the floor where the Hall ended and the Dining Room began. “The Wall has been crying”, one of the children said, ”How sad!”
Avril came to hear about the weeping Wall and said to the children, “We must do something to bring some happiness to the Wall. It needs some cheering up and some time spent with it.”
“It needs some friends to keep it company”, someone else said. “Maybe we could get it a dog?”
Well……OK…..it didn’t come about exactly that way, but I had fun imagining the weeping wall!
The idea of doing this mural came from… yes, having a bare, boring wall but also from imagining a project that would involve many of the children in the painting of it and would leave a beautiful piece of art behind for all children to enjoy for a long time in the future.
Children often find snails to be fascinating and they had talked about snails in many of their classes and had found snails out in the gardens of the school. I am fascinated by snails too and love the swirls of their shells.
To make the mural I made a series of stencils out of heavy paper. The children worked with trays of acrylic paint. Blobs of several colours in each tray. They pressed the paints onto the wall where it showed within the stencil shapes using brushes, bits of sponge and metal pot scrubbers even! They learned the difference between pressing and brushing. They experimented with how the blobs of colour mixed and streaked as they pushed their sponges onto the stencils. When we would pull of the sections of stencil it was so exciting to see what they had created. It was a great surprise that all this dabbing with pot scrubbers helped to create a snail, or a tuft of grass.
The project took several weeks to paint as we did layers of patterns and had to wait for each layer to dry before adding another. Children worked in pairs on sections, helping each other out and melding their work together. The painters came from the older classrooms and each lunch time the younger ones were excited to see what had been added to on the wall. Children who had painted pointed out their sections to other kids. The children were very concentrated while they were painting and took great care and pride in what they were doing. I am sure that the Wall is now much happier!
P.S. My son Benjamin was my great assistant in much of this and took most of the photos. Thank you Benjamin!
Mental Health Tiles Project 2011
In the Spring of 2011 I took part in a project involving over 200 students in grades 5-10 at a local school. The goal of the project was to bring the subject of mental health into discussion among the students focusing on their individual experiences; what they regarded as influencing their positive mental health.
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The classes had sessions with teachers in which they discussed the topic and began working on images to symbolize what positive mental health meant to them. I then worked with them for 2 sessions each, working on developing the designs and painting the images onto 6" square tiles with acrylic paint. The tiles are to be mounted as a mass permanent installation within the halls of the school.
Collage Silhouettes 2011
This collage was made of papers painted and printed by the children of the preschool ages 2-5.
This was a project that had many stages and involved over 40 children between the ages of 2-5. We began by having several children lie down on paper and having their outlines drawn. They said it tickled!
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I then chose 3 outlines that I thought were varied and interesting. The classes then spent several sessions working with paint in various ways. It is hard for children to really completely cover a sheet of paper with colour. We used brushes, potato printing and symmetrical folding of painted sheets to create reams of interesting colours and forms. Children mixed colours and worked around and over each other’s paintings to layer images. Then the dried sheets were ripped into mostly hand size fragments to prepare for collaging. The collage stage was done by groups of children working on sections, each group continuing the work of the last. When completed, the figures were trimmed to the silhouette edges and mounted on plywood. The sided were painted and a skipping rope, balls, a hoola-hoop and blocks were added to link the figures together. Whew! It took several months to get the pieces finished but they were really fun to do.
SJ Early Childhood Logo 2010
Working with approximately 40 children spanning the ages from 3 to 5 we created a quasi mosaic-collage of the school's logo. I chose to work with cardboard recycled from cereal boxes, kleenex boxes and such that had a glossy finish. Children, parents and teachers in the school collected boxes and boxes for me and there were several cutting events that I persuaded school children and my own children to take part in. We ended up with sorted piles of shiny colours with bits of images or text on them for the children to collage with.
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The logo was broken down into it's component shapes and groups of children would work on gluing cardboard "tiles" onto individual shapes such as a house or a water piece. They finished sections were trimmed and re-assembled onto black paper to imitate black grout of a mosaic. Finally it was mounted on plywood and now greets visitors and children in the main stairwell of the school.
ecole Samuel de Champlain Triptych 2008
In 2007/2008 I worked with the students and staff of Centre scolaire Samuel-de-Champlain to create a mosaic mural celebrating the
richness and pride of the francophone community of greater Saint John. Working with all students at the middle school level.
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I instructed and assisted them in the use of mosaic tools, how to design, cut and lay tiles through to the messy mortaring and grouting process. The children used a combination of glass and ceramic materials. The project was a year in the making and resulted in 3- 4x6ft. murals which have been hung in the school entrance.