FIT mural honors school’s 75th anniversary
BY GABE HERMAN
Students at the Fashion Institute
of Technology have unveiled a
sprawling mural that includes 90
panels to celebrate the Chelsea school’s
75th anniversary.
The work called “ChalkFIT” covers
the outside of school buildings from
26th to 28th streets along Seventh
Avenue. Each panel represents a different
year, going back to the school’s
founding in 1944 and stretching several
years into the future. The panels
are presented chronologically and each
student was allowed to pick the subject
or theme of the assigned year.
The creative panels represent a wide
variety of themes, from music and art
to politics and social movements. There
are several related to the Civil Rights
Movement, including tributes to Rosa
Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Kenny
Washington, who in 1946 was one
of the fi rst African American players in
the NFL.
The 2009 panel, by Yei Mo Yang, is
called “Yes We Did” and honors President
Barack Obama as the fi rst African
American president.
“I wanted to emphasize how this was
one of the most iconic and most ‘American’
moments in history,” Yang wrote
of her work.
The mural project is led by Professor
The panels go several years into the future.
Dan Shefelman, who has overseen the
annual project since its 2013 launch.
Past themes have included innovation,
the human experience, and resilience
after the 2016 Chelsea bombing.
Shefelman noted that many of the
panels include multiple subjects, like
They count on you,
So count on us to
keep you going.
PHOTO BY GABE HERMAN
crossing “Star Wars” and “Saturday
Night Fever” in 1977, or genetically
modifi ed food and video games for
1994. “They’ve been trained for years
to combine concepts,” he said of the
students.
The 2017 panel depicts the Women’s
March and Billie Jean King is the subject
of the 1973 panel, called “Power of
She.”
“I placed her in space using tennis
balls as planets,” noted artist Yon Hee
Allen of that panel, “and chose a bright
color palette that worked well with the
theme.”
Several panels through the decades
explore technological issues. The 1998
panel, called “Memphis,” is by Joey
de Haas, who said the two big things
that stuck out from that year were the
launch of Windows 98 and the founding
of Google.
“I wanted to do a piece inspired
by the aesthetics of Windows 98 that
was devoted to the idea of searching
the web for… anything,” de Haas said.
“The world is your oyster. I titled the
piece ‘Memphis’ as a nod to the fact
that in early development, Windows 98
was called Windows Memphis. Do you
know how I know that? Google.”
Some of the panels also have augmented
reality through an app called
Arilyn. The features can include music
from the time period and a history of
that year.
The murals get a lot of attention from
people walking by, and Shefelman said
the responses are generally very positive
and respectful. He said the panels
have turned out very well this year.
“I feel great about it,” he said.
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