For the past two summers, senior Bobby Zabin has worked as part of the Mayor’s Mural Crew—a City of Boston Parks and Recreation program, whose goal is to enhance the style and visual landscape of Boston neighborhoods. This summer, Bobby was commissioned by the program’s leadership to design and execute a large-scale, permanent mural—15 feet tall by 60 feet long—intended to promote National Geographic’s Beyond King Tut immersive exhibit, which is currently installed at the SoWa Power Station on Harrison Avenue. Bobby is the first high school student invited to design a mural for the program in the Crew’s recent history.

Bobby’s charge was to design—and then lead the execution of—a mural in the Ancient Egyptian style that would draw people’s eyes and interest in the adjacent King Tut exhibit. Drawing upon his love of art, his knowledge gained from Dr. Sue McCrory’s AP Art History class, and his experience with the Mural Crew, Bobby was up to the task.

“The first thing I did was look at the actual murals in King Tut’s tomb, which are more than 3,000 years old,” Bobby says. “Some of the research took me a while, because the material is not in English. Then I spent time looking at other funeral art from Ancient Egypt. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to create, and what story I wanted to depict, I used an app on my phone where I can just draw, and so I made my own.”

The crew working on Bobby’s mural included 15 high school students from schools throughout Boston, as well as three college-aged facilitators—all supported, ultimately, by Heidi Schork, the program’s long-time director. Together they worked over two and a half weeks, first erecting their scaffolding and then priming the wall with a neutral, cream-color acrylic paint. Once that priming layer was dry, the group began sketching out the figures and shapes—according to Bobby’s design—with a thin layer of orange paint.

“The story that the mural depicts is really similar to the one in King Tut’s actual tomb,” explains Bobby. “It’s essentially him being welcomed into the afterlife by various Ancient Egyptian gods. Once we sketched out the major figures, the majority of the work became filling in the lines. Because it’s designed in the Ancient Egyptian style, the art is pretty simple—it’s not very detailed or naturalistic. It’s basically colors and shapes.”

What Bobby learned in Dr. McCrory’s Art History class last year helped inform and prepare him for designing a mural of this style and scope.

“One of the units in that course was actually Ancient Egyptian art. In the AP Art History curriculum, on the test, there are 250 objects you have to know from across time and across history. One of those objects is a papyrus from Ancient Egypt about a man who’s being judged by the gods on his journey to the afterlife. Having researched that, I had a lot of material and a lot of prior knowledge that I could use to better research and design this new mural. That class prepared me to analyze and understand this type of art in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. The Egyptian style is remarkable, because it basically didn’t change for all of that kingdom’s history. It’s one of the only really concrete art forms that persists, essentially unchanged, over thousands of years. Knowing and understanding it well, I was able to point out mistakes that my fellow crew mates were making, so that we could honor these Ancient Egyptian murals. For instance, in this style there is never an item depicted smaller in the background in order to create an illusion of depth or distance. Egyptian murals are considered to be rather ‘flat’ and lacking depth perspective. So, people would try to paint a small plant behind a figure, to make it look far away, and I was like, ‘You can’t do that. They didn’t do that.’”

The realities of painting outdoors all day, on scaffolding, in the hot, summer sun present logistical challenges, but Bobby claimed that the biggest challenge was being in charge.

“I wasn’t really expecting all these people to be asking me what to do—even though I designed the mural! Every minute I was painting, someone would inevitably come up and ask, ‘Bobby, is this the right color?’ or ‘Should this go there?’ or ‘Does this look right?’ I’d have to stop what I was doing to help or take a look, which could be frustrating. But, it also made me feel good, that they were looking to me for guidance, and that I had the answers.

“Stepping back and looking at the completed mural—with everyone looking at it, taking pictures, asking their parents and relatives to come look at it—made me feel really proud, of myself and of everyone who worked on it. It was such a hard thing to do, and we did it.”

For now, Bobby is working in his Studio Art class on his portfolio, which consists largely of watercolors—his favorite, small-format medium. His subject of choice these days is birds, and trying to connect them to Latin America—to his mom’s family’s history in Colombia.

Bobby’s King Tut mural, installed by the Mayors’ Mural Crew, lives at 471 Harrison Avenue in Boston. The mural project received press from all around the City, including by WCVB. The Mayor’s Mural Crew began in 1991 as a summer initiative to cover graffiti with murals painted and designed by high school students from the City of Boston. Over the course of the program, the Crew has engaged hundreds of young people. Its mission today is to create neighborhood landmarks within Boston’s parks and playgrounds. They offer creative job training opportunities beyond murals, with projects that include installations, public and green space design, temporary street art, pop-up exhibits and art, and community events.

Each year, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, in partnership with more than 100 visual and literary arts organizations across the country, accept submissions from teens in grades 7 through 12 for their Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Hundreds of thousands of art and writing submissions across 11 categories are judged based on originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice. Roxbury Latin senior, Miguel Rincon, not only earned Gold Key recognition in the regional competition for his short documentary film titled LoPresti Park, but his film also won a Gold Key Award in the national competition. Even more impressive, Miguel was one of only six students in the country selected to win the 2021 Civic Expression Award. This award is the highest honor presented annually by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and it comes with a $1,000 scholarship. (Read more about Miguel’s prize-winning film, and view it in its entirety.)

As a Civic Expression Award winner, Miguel and his work will be highlighted in the program’s anthology, The Best Teen Art of 2021, in the Awards’ Online Galleries. Recipients of the Civic Expression Award also receive recognition in the Awards’ National Ceremony, which will be presented virtually this year on June 9.

Four other RL students found success in this year’s Scholastic Regional competition: James McCurley (III) earned a Silver Key for his science fiction writing submission titled Soup and Stories; Alex Uek (I) won an Honorable Mention for his drawing Unmatched; George Madison (II) earned an Honorable Mention in Photography for his piece titled Spiraling; and Joseph Wang (IV) earned an Honorable Mention for his poem Snow Showers. Several talented Roxbury Latin students earn regional honors for their art and writing in the Scholastic competition each year.

In addition to winning a Gold Key award in the Scholastic competition, Miguel created a sculpture that was chosen as a winner in the 2021 Emerging Young Artists Exhibition, sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. Miguel’s clay sculpture, The Little Prince, was one of 88 works selected to be part of the exhibition, out of more than 430 submissions. This competitive, annual, high school juried exhibition recognizes the exceptional work of art students from high schools throughout New England.

The Little Prince was one of several pieces that Miguel created as part of his junior year Studio Art elective with Brian Buckley. Struggling with what exactly to make, he was inspired by the idea of creating gifts for people in his life—so that’s what he did. Out of wire, he crafted a hummingbird for his mother—her favorite animal; he made a wood-burning design of a horse for his grandfather in Colombia; and, out of clay, he crafted a sculpture based on the cover art of the French-language book Le Petit Prince, for his French teacher, Roxbury Latin faculty member Ousmane Diop.

“I tried to recreate the cover as well as I could, but I didn’t want to make it exactly the same,” says Miguel. Over the span of two marking periods, he shaped all the clay parts and fired them in the kiln. “Creating this sculpture took me a really long time, so as another studio project I did the painting for it—it was almost like a two-for-one project. As I was working on it, the head fell off the figure, and because I wanted to do something a little different, I thought maybe I should swap the head with the rose, and that it might look pretty cool. I didn’t plan for that to happen, but I liked the way it looked, and I thought it offered a different perspective.” While a photograph of the sculpture is part of the awards exhibit, the piece itself now lives on Monsieur Diop’s office desk.

Miguel will find out this spring how his documentary film, LoPresti Park, fared in the national Scholastic competition. In the meantime, Miguel will team up with classmate Brady Chappell as the two boys plan to create a documentary film on homelessness in Boston as their Independent Senior Project. “After having the opportunity to try out all these different media, filmmaking is still my favorite for now,” says Miguel.

On December 3, students and faculty were joined in virtual Hall by Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs, a celebrated visual artist who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991. Growing up in Roxbury during hip-hop’s Golden Age, Mr. Gibbs saw the power of graffiti as a form of self expression. The medium became a tool for him to chronicle and immortalize his community’s culture and history—a way to document, pay homage to, and beautify the City’s underserved neighborhoods. His remarkable artwork has brought him much notice and acclaim. Mr. Gibbs was featured last spring on the cover of Boston Globe Magazine for an issue titled “Why Art Matters.” In the spring, Mr. Gibbs also partnered with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts as an artist-in-residence, in part creating a mural in his Breathe Life series at a vocational high school in Roxbury, not far from the Museum grounds.

In Hall, Mr. Gibbs began with a brief video of him and fellow street artist Marka27 completing a large-scale production beneath a bridge in Boston’s Ink Block, titled “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The clip of ProBlak and Marka27 creating that mural offered students a sense of the scale, paint application, and intention behind the artistic piece.

Mr. Gibbs went on to answer questions from both students and adults, speaking about his start as an artist; his process; the challenges inherent in his medium; his inspirations and collaborations with fellow artists; and how his work has evolved over decades. The next day, Mr. Gibbs joined RL art classes, via Zoom, meeting with students from Class VI to Class I in Studio Art, Art & Technology, and Digital Design courses.

Beyond his artistic practice, Mr. Gibbs is also co-founder of Boston’s Artists For Humanity, a non-profit that hires and teaches young people creative skills—from painting to screen printing to 3-D model making. For the past 29 years, Mr. Gibbs has mentored and guided countless burgeoning, young artists through the organization, and continues today as its Paint Studio Director.

In his mentor role, he explained, one of the key lessons he hopes to impart is “how to honor a commitment. No matter what [these young people] commit themselves toward, that’s a transferable skill that they can put toward anything. If you have the will to sit in front of a painting, or a piece of paper, you can put that drive toward finishing school work, studying, staying focused. I want [these kids] to be better than they were when they came in, as human beings.”

With a focus on arts education, Mr. Gibbs has conducted mentoring workshops for Girls, Inc., The Boston Foundation, Boston Housing Authority, and Youth Build, Washington, DC. He served as a guest lecturer at Northeastern for their “Foundations of Black Culture: Hip-Hop” course. He was the curator for BAMS Fest’s “Rep Your City” exhibition in 2019.

Mr. Gibbs is the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2006 Graffiti Artist of the Year award from the Mass Industry Committee, and the Goodnight Initiative’s Civic Artist Award. In 2020, he was honored with the Hero Among Us award by the Boston Celtics. His work has been featured by NBC, WBUR, the Boston Art Review, and Boston Magazine, among many other outlets.

View the entirety of Mr. Gibbs’s Hall presentation.

While the pandemic prevents guests from coming to campus this year, it also prevents the student artwork that reliably lines the halls from benefitting a broader audience. Arts Department Chair Brian Buckley and Headmaster Kerry Brennan were intent that the school still share students’ impressive work, despite the logistical constraints. With the helpful cooperation of art faculty members, students from all classes, and other colleagues, Roxbury Latin launched today its online art gallery, ART@RL. We hope that virtual visitors will enjoy the various class galleries, which include works—paintings, drawings, sculptures—created by students from Class I through Class VI.

At Roxbury Latin, the ultimate goal of the Arts Department isn’t to make artists, but to make art lovers. The intention is not to make masters, but rather students who are sophisticated at looking, and appreciating, and accessing meaning in art—all important skills in a complex world.

And yet, each year students choose to take their artistic interests and talents to great heights, creating true masterpieces—delighting in both the frustrations and rewards of committing to a work of art and bringing it to its full potential. Boys routinely win regional and national honors for their paintings and drawings.

Through the Visual Arts, Roxbury Latin faculty also teach boys about the history of art and the masters who have come before them: They give students a historical sense of the technologies and techniques employed by artists, architects, and engineers over time—and through which those individuals responded to practical or creative problems.

​Visit ART@RL today, and check back frequently.