wondersmith-and-sons:zoobus:random-entertainment: the kids had fun learning about color theory&helli
wondersmith-and-sons:zoobus:random-entertainment: the kids had fun learning about color theory… Laughing my ass off at this comment because I found the source and literallyTan says, “Hundreds of flowers were painted by the students pressing their hand prints to the wall during a chilly January. Wall, hand, flower, wall, hand, flower… It was [a] heartfelt expression of gratitude for the school where they spent their high school lives. Layer upon layer of flower petals created a row of cherry trees in full bloom, through which I could feel the warmth of spring despite the cold cracks on the wall of [the] school building. It was as if the now-disused building reflected the warmth of the people who were once there.”Color theory in a children’s institution strikes again! for the record, this is what it looks like from the outside, from the original source in japanese:this is what it looks in a brightly-lit interior:(source in japanese) (mymodernmet article in english)this was a part of okurie, a project founded after the great eastern japan earthquake as a way for local communities to remember and pay homage to damaged buildings set to be destroyed. it was started by UDOK, a local art group, to allow people mourn and remember the places that they once used, loved, visited and lived in, but this particular mural was made by students giving a sendoff to their high school that was set to be demolished due to structural damage. the longer article (in japanese, but easily google-translatable if you go in paragraphs) goes into the project a lot more; how this was obviously a work of communal joy, remembrance, acceptance, healing, and grief, made by kids giving a funeral to a building they loved. the branches are supposed to show how the school was connected to the land, the cherry blossoms being a meaningful symbol for graduation, change, and the future. the article also goes into the emotional process of the goodbye, how students went back into the empty classrooms to take pictures and reminisce about their memories there, how it was an idea started by one art student, but soon became a community project. students were doing this in the dead of winter; one girl would complain of her hands freezing, but continuing anyway because of how being part of a communal art project made her feel. it became a point of connection and joy, as students, alumni and teachers would be sharing it on twitter as a means of saying goodbye to a building they loved.there isn’t anything on this in english (that i could find) aside from the mymodernmet article, probably because this was never supposed to go viral outside of japan - but this was an art project started by local communities after horrific natural disaster, so of course some redditbro decided to take this out of context. people poured so much love and time and sincerity into it, and it’s extremely dismissive how you’re all reducing it to an easily-consumable Har Har Joak Meme or construing them to be too stupid, naive, or short-sighted to understand how their art would come across, when it was never for your consumption in the first place. -- source link