(Sept. 7, 2017) Members of the greater Berlin community are being encouraged to attend the Community Mural Project, Open Paint and Community Pot Luck next Saturday, Sept. 16 from 4-7 p.m. at the Germantown School on 10223 Trappe Road.
The event is free and open to the public, and scheduled to include food, live music, and displays from the Germantown School Community Heritage Center and Calvin B. Taylor House Museum.
The center of the event is an open paint session for a community mural that will be permanently installed on the exterior of the Berlin Welcome Center, downtown on Main Street.
Muralist John Donato set up a large canvas outside of the Taylor House Museum during the Berlin Peach Festival on Aug. 5, when dozens of people of all ages helped to paint a mural that will hang at the Germantown School.
“The turnout was really good,” Donato said. “We had everybody from toddlers to great-grandparents come out to work on the mural. There’s a little bit of instruction, so I’m definitely guiding people through the process, but they basically do all the painting.”
Donato said the open paint at Germantown would work the same way – he will create illustrative outlines on the mural panel and members of the community will fill in the details.
“There will be a lot already on it because we started it a while back,” he said. “It’s all guided, all the materials are there. You don’t need any experience and you can paint of a minute or for an hour.”
He said the imagery is meant to tie together two of Berlin’s most important historical hubs – the Taylor House Museum and Germantown School.
The Taylor House was home to and influential figure during the early part of the town’s history and the school, built around 1922, was one of several community schools that served black children during segregation.
Both buildings were resurrected by community volunteers after a period of disuse and are now used both as history museums and cultural centers.
“We looked at the history of the Germantown School and celebrating the resurgence and rebirth of the school – how it changed hands and now it’s back again as a cultural center,” Donato said. “We’re tying the people, today, who are involved with the Germantown School or involved with the Taylor House Museum and everybody throughout history in the town that led up to that. There were a lot of people that made those things exist and nurtured them through time.”
Underscoring those connections, Donato said, is at the heart of the event.
“There have been people that have always been engaged, serving the community and serving other people, and they have always represented such great leadership and sort of caretaking of others,” he said. “They made a lot of these efforts just through wanting to see the town succeed. They really gave a lot of their time and their energy and their effort to make these things happen.
“We really wanted folks today to be able to celebrate how connected we are through everybody in history who came together to make these things exist,” Donato added. “And it’s really good to know how a building like [the Germantown School] started and how it came into existence and to understand the story.
“So, there’s going to be a lot of displays [during the event] with a lot of photos that folks will see for the first time and they’ll have no idea – I didn’t know this person did this and that’s why this street is named that … we’re all connected through our history, even if we don’t know it.
“The rich history of it all shouldn’t be forgotten because I think it helps us exist together, understanding how we are connected – good or bad – and how far we’ve come,” Donato said. “It helps us understand where we’re going and what we value together. That’s really the story – this perseverance, the leadership, the vision that started a couple hundred years ago and still exists. We didn’t invent all of this. There were people that started this and we’re living their vision.”
For more information on the Germantown School, visit www.thegermantownschool.org.
For more information on the Berlin Arts and Entertainment Committee, visit www.artsinberlin.org.
The event is free and open to the public, and scheduled to include food, live music, and displays from the Germantown School Community Heritage Center and Calvin B. Taylor House Museum.
The center of the event is an open paint session for a community mural that will be permanently installed on the exterior of the Berlin Welcome Center, downtown on Main Street.
Muralist John Donato set up a large canvas outside of the Taylor House Museum during the Berlin Peach Festival on Aug. 5, when dozens of people of all ages helped to paint a mural that will hang at the Germantown School.
“The turnout was really good,” Donato said. “We had everybody from toddlers to great-grandparents come out to work on the mural. There’s a little bit of instruction, so I’m definitely guiding people through the process, but they basically do all the painting.”
Donato said the open paint at Germantown would work the same way – he will create illustrative outlines on the mural panel and members of the community will fill in the details.
“There will be a lot already on it because we started it a while back,” he said. “It’s all guided, all the materials are there. You don’t need any experience and you can paint of a minute or for an hour.”
He said the imagery is meant to tie together two of Berlin’s most important historical hubs – the Taylor House Museum and Germantown School.
The Taylor House was home to and influential figure during the early part of the town’s history and the school, built around 1922, was one of several community schools that served black children during segregation.
Both buildings were resurrected by community volunteers after a period of disuse and are now used both as history museums and cultural centers.
“We looked at the history of the Germantown School and celebrating the resurgence and rebirth of the school – how it changed hands and now it’s back again as a cultural center,” Donato said. “We’re tying the people, today, who are involved with the Germantown School or involved with the Taylor House Museum and everybody throughout history in the town that led up to that. There were a lot of people that made those things exist and nurtured them through time.”
Underscoring those connections, Donato said, is at the heart of the event.
“There have been people that have always been engaged, serving the community and serving other people, and they have always represented such great leadership and sort of caretaking of others,” he said. “They made a lot of these efforts just through wanting to see the town succeed. They really gave a lot of their time and their energy and their effort to make these things happen.
“We really wanted folks today to be able to celebrate how connected we are through everybody in history who came together to make these things exist,” Donato added. “And it’s really good to know how a building like [the Germantown School] started and how it came into existence and to understand the story.
“So, there’s going to be a lot of displays [during the event] with a lot of photos that folks will see for the first time and they’ll have no idea – I didn’t know this person did this and that’s why this street is named that … we’re all connected through our history, even if we don’t know it.
“The rich history of it all shouldn’t be forgotten because I think it helps us exist together, understanding how we are connected – good or bad – and how far we’ve come,” Donato said. “It helps us understand where we’re going and what we value together. That’s really the story – this perseverance, the leadership, the vision that started a couple hundred years ago and still exists. We didn’t invent all of this. There were people that started this and we’re living their vision.”
For more information on the Germantown School, visit www.thegermantownschool.org.
For more information on the Berlin Arts and Entertainment Committee, visit www.artsinberlin.org.