The Art Department decided to give a special gift to the upcoming graduates at Los Medanos College with a massive mural that is on display in the quad on the Pittsburg campus.
The mural, created by graduating student Alexis Ramirez, was installed on May 15 by Cesar Reyes, Graphic Arts professor John Schall, Art History professor Nick Nabas and art student Ile Garcia.
Ile Garcia described the installation as “very good” and was happy to be out there helping with the project.
The process took about a month to create, and Ramirez was chosen out of a variety of different designs that were created by other students.
“We then chose a couple to move forward with to the art department, then the VP, and through that process, my design was selected as the options were narrowed down,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez created the work with Photoshop and chose to use the number “1,358” in the mural to help display how many students would be graduating from LMC after this semester.
“I want them to see the number — 1,358, and feel a part of something that they made happen,” Ramirez said.
The project was printed on sticky panels, and Jason Dearman, an automotive teacher at LMC, provided it to the art department.
It ended up being around 42 feet long for each roll, with there being 4 rolls in total for the entirety of the mural.
The Art Department chose to do this mural design for the graduates because the Art Department tries to do as many designs as possible throughout the year.
“We like to do cool stuff, and anytime we find people who want to do the work and cool projects, we are always interested,” Reyes said.
This is the third year that LMC has done a special project for graduates on campus, and the Art Department has been a part of all of them, along with having support from Vice President of Business and Administrative Services Carlos Montoya.
“We’ve all been very excited about this because we had a student designer come up with it — and then go through multiple iterations,” Reyes said.
Another design will be going up in front of the library before graduation next week, and the Art Department hopes that students will feel happy when they see it.
“I hope they realize how far they’ve come and that they have so much greatness ahead of them,” said Ramirez.
