One Mural, Many Hands: Painting with Katie YamasakiMaster ClassIn-Person
The remarkable Katie Yamasaki has painted more than ninety stunning murals, from Brooklyn school walls to the women’s jail on Rikers Island. She rarely paints alone. She invites schoolchildren, neighbors, and incarcerated mothers to tell their stories, then brings their different visions together. The results are big, joyful, and of a piece. This spring she’ll do the same with teachers, who will spend a day painting a mural with Katie at Groundswell, the Brooklyn nonprofit where young people working with artists have painted hundreds of murals across New York City. During this master class, each teacher will paint an image inspired by teaching, and Katie will help bring them together into a single mural. The finished work will travel from school to school, where students can see what their teachers made. Katie taught in New York City public schools for thirteen years. She knows classrooms. And she knows how to turn a roomful of people into one picture.
VISUAL ART, PAINTING, STORYTELLING
3 credits
CTLE credit available
Katie Yamasaki
Katie Yamasaki is a Brooklyn muralist, author, and illustrator. Her picture books include Dad Bakes, a Kirkus and Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of 2021; Shapes, Lines, and Light: My Grandfather’s American Journey, about her grandfather Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center; and, most recently, Invisible Crown (February 2027). For many years she led Voices Her’d, Groundswell’s mural program for teenage girls. She taught art at Ballet Tech, New York City’s public school for dance, and has taught in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, where she also earned her MFA.