National Art Honors Society (NAHS) is basically NHS, but with art contributions for our service. The supervisor is Kat Anderson and the members are: Joslyn Stamp, Olivia Grogan, TG Su, Ava Witherspoon, Anna Doughtery, Djuan Buss, Violet Vacanti, Rital Miller, Dori Primmer, Sersi Wu, Maddie Marco, Alice Roka, Alice Snyder, Rachel Hoban, Noli Marsh, Ayana Kola, and Xoe Roy. We create ideas to benefit our community through art.
For 3 years, we have helped local producer and community contributor Jay Robinson, or Jay Boi, with creating a mural for places he works at and people he works with. This year, his new recording studio is in a building connected to the soul food restaurant Devina’s Delicious Delights. One of our projects this year was a mural in Little Italy for this music producer, Jay Boi. This is the third mural we have created for Jay Boi where he wanted aspects of Jazz and Italian aspects all into one.
Jay Boi helps kids who want to learn music and thrive in the music industry. He wants everyone to have a chance in creating music. He helps teach kids and he also has spaces for people to rent out to come and produce music. The inside of this area is very decked out with decorations all around. It is the perfect place to have fun while also being hard at work. This space is also shared with Devina’s Delicious Delights. They were so kind to offer us food for lunch as our break. Everyone enjoyed the food so much. It was flavorful and felt like a warming home cooked meal. You can tell that they take great care in creating the food and they hope for their hard work to get paid off as they develop more and more. These two places are an interesting place to check out especially if you like music or if you want a delicious home cooked meal.
The mural was worked on for 2 days, where members of NAHS worked for around 8 hours painting. The first day partially consisted of cleaning up the chalk sketch done by Mrs. Anderson and Jay Boi the night before. With a program that creates a paint-by-number like version of a piece and a projector. The program was not exact and so corrections were made, however, most details that needed to be fixed were altered while painting. Primarily, the day was getting the base colors and silhouettes painted.
A notable part of the day was the numerous people who stopped and to look or ask about the mural. Many of those who lived in the neighborhood stopped by to ask about the project, and those who were on walks complimented it as they passed by. Oftentimes, those who were driving through the neighborhood would slow and look at the mural, either rolling down their windows to make a positive comment or honking as they passed. A few construction workers from a nearby site came to see what was going on and talked to Jay Boi about the work being done. It was truly a welcome surprise to see how much attention the mural garnered and how many community members came by or complimented the piece this day. Not an hour passed without a friendly stranger admiring the work.
The second day consisted of cleaning up the lines and adding the finer details. We had to reshape some areas, so they were more like the reference photo. We worked all day on all the details and the cleaning up. Like the day before, there was no shortage of kind community members who stopped to briefly ask about the project and passerbys who honked. In the end, it was looking spectacular. Jay Boi was very grateful for what we have created for him. This mural helped spruce up the streets of Little Italy and give Little Italy a voice through our art.
