July 2026's Teen Art Camp Creates a Collaborative Mural

This summer’s Teen Art Camp gave young artists the chance to experience mural-making from several different perspectives while working together to create one cohesive public artwork.

Throughout the week, campers collaborated across four rectangular panels, building on the mural day by day under the guidance of a different professional artist. Each visiting artist brought a distinct style, set of techniques and approach to large-scale work, giving the teens a broader understanding of what mural-making can be.

The week began on Monday with Cristi Lopez, who helped campers establish the mural’s visual direction and shared themes. On Tuesday, Zulu Painter introduced the group to his distinctive artistic style and demonstrated his process as the mural continued to develop.

On Wednesday, Derek Donnelly worked and demonstrated for the campers while discussing the history of spray paint as an art form. His visit gave the teens insight into both the techniques involved and the evolution of spray paint from a creative medium into an important part of contemporary public art.

Thursday’s session was led by Ashley Cantero, who shared her own style and creative methods. She also taught campers an essential lesson for artists working at any scale: how to revise, adapt and recover from mistakes. Instead of treating an unexpected mark or unsuccessful idea as a failure, campers learned how it could become a starting point for a new creative solution.

Along the way, campers explored color theory, repeated imagery and the importance of finding common threads that could connect many different ideas. Because each day introduced a new artist and creative influence, the teens had to think carefully about consistency-how to preserve individual expression while still making all four panels feel like parts of one unified piece.

The mural also included deeply personal elements. Each camper created a goldfish as a self-portrait, using color, pattern and visual details to represent something about themselves. They also designed a music note that reflected part of their personality, interests or identity. These individual contributions became part of the larger composition, giving the mural a strong sense of both community and personal voice.

Artist Mena Kiernan assisted throughout the week and led Friday’s session, helping the class bring everything together. The final day focused on completing details, strengthening the visual connections between the panels and ensuring that the mural read as one cohesive work.

The finished panels have now been sealed (thanks, Mena!) and will be permanently installed at SHAMc, where they can be enjoyed by campers, families, artists and visitors for years to come.

Teen Art Camp was more than an opportunity to paint. It was a lesson in collaboration, flexibility, color theory, creative problem-solving and public art. We are grateful to Cristi Lopez, Zulu Painter, Derek Donnelly, Ashley Cantero, Mena Kiernan, Autumn Pearson (SHAMc's Director, also an artist!), and Katie Bush (our Marketing Director, also an artist!) for sharing their time, techniques and experience-and to the campers whose stories and creativity now have a permanent place at SHAMc!