Students team up to 'navigate the future'

CSUMB President Dianne Harrison and Marina High School principal John Schilling joined two student artists for a ribbon cutting ceremony at Marina High School on Dec. 6. As the high school band played, the group snipped colorful streamers draped across a brand new mural adorning a wall of the school building, the result of a yearlong collaboration between CSU Monterey Bay’s Visual and Public Art Department and the school.

The mural takes its name from the school’s motto, Navigate the Future. Last spring, students at MHS exchanged ideas and drawings with Professor Johanna Poethig’s painting and mural class, and then, this fall, the project was brought to life.

It shows a lighthouse and a yellow brick road with ancient footprints that lead to a universe of endless possibilities. At the base, a compass emerges from the ground while a figure at the right looks through a telescope to the future. A high-tech “teleporter” depicts a light-hearted, science fiction-infused peek into a future technological world.

CSUMB graduate Roxana Keland (’97, Visual and Public Art) has contributed both money and time to VPA’s collaboration with the high school.

She described herself as one of the university’s first students and recalled joining with others to paint murals on former barracks that dotted the new campus. Now she sees the Marina High students doing a similar thing, while discovering their own talent.

To read more about Keland, click here. 

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