GLENDALE : Mentors From Disney Assist Student Artists

They brainstormed. And they brainstormed. And they talked about the project some more.

To glance at the schedule for creating the 17-foot-wide by 30-foot-tall multicolored mural “Cries of the Unheard,” which hangs from the south wall of the Alex Theatre, is to see what really goes into a project this size.

For nine months, 34 Glendale high school students and teachers met weekly with mentors from Walt Disney Imagineering to design, research, budget, sketch and paint the mural. The group’s first seven meetings involved brainstorming about the project’s theme and how it should be illustrated.

Julie Svendsen, who works in the show design department at Walt Disney Imagineering, said brainstorming is crucial for Disney Imagineers who literally spend hundreds of hours creating theme park attractions.

“We have a good system for doing projects,” Svendsen said. “We’re experienced in getting people together to form a chemistry between them.”

After many planning sessions, the group took its inspiration for the mural’s theme from a poem written by Glendale High School student and mural team member Mike Haltom.

“Out of the ashes of the fire we arise. Holding a new light with a new guise. Plants always grow in fresh new soil. Plant the seeds of hope before it spoils,” reads the caption taken from Haltom’s poem and placed at the bottom of the mural.

In the mural, a phoenix rises out of a city plagued by decay and destruction, illustrating how today’s youth attempt to overcome generations of neglect, mural sponsors said.

Despite the mural’s somber theme, Walt Disney Imagineering mentor Hani El-Masri said the painting is the end product of a project that gave students from Daily, Glendale, Crescenta Valley and Hoover high schools some real-life experience outside a classroom.

“What you don’t see here is what people learned from this project--the mural is just the cherry on the ice cream, but it’s not the real fruit,” El-Masri said.

The mural is the third collaborative project between the Glendale Unified School District and Walt Disney Imagineering in three years, said district spokesman Vic Pallos.

The partnership program has provided students with internship-type opportunities and allowed them to develop first-rate portfolios and contacts in the art world, said retired art teacher Duane Hagen.

Mural team member and Glendale High School alum Hyung Sun Kim agreed, adding that the mural project helped him learn to work with others and how to bring the ideas of many individuals together to form a single work of art.

Since the mural was unveiled this month, the district and Imagineering mentors have resumed brainstorming, and are discussing a project that would involve construction--such as a fountain or a sculpture.