Flipping open the pages of Imagination was a grant project awarded by the Stockton Arts Commission that had multi-layers of community involvement. The Grant was made up of several community components. A mural that includes student artwork, workshops, and final display of student artwork and flip book animations at the Fair Oaks Library and a closing community awards celebration.

The mural artwork symbolizes the power of reading that fuels creativity and imagination. An octopus was chosen as it has three hearts and nine brains and symbolically represents complexity, diversity, intelligence, vision and insight. Stockton is one of the most diverse cities in the country and the artwork is a celebration of the strength of its people. The octopus fills the curved wall near the entrance of the library and its colorful legs span around the wall holding and reading multiple books. Out of the octopus’s hat emerges the creativity and imagination machine. The mechanisms represent the influence of reading as the fuel for the machine, celebrating ideas of creativity and imagination that happen through reading. Above the legs of the octopus are highlighted mechanisms or “cogs”. Several of these “cog” visual elements were taken directly from selected artwork from Fair Oaks area student art submissions. Student submissions were submitted from multiple Fair Oaks areas schools grades k-12 and the Fair Oaks library and Stribley Community Center. In addition to the mural, multiple workshops were held in the Fair Oaks area, teaching students the magic of making art come to life through Flip book animation. In the end the flip book showcasing student animations were shown on display at the library as well as all the artwork submission that were entered for the mural.

I would like to thank the Fair Oaks community for their hospitality, wonderful creativity and artwork. Thank you to the Stockton Arts Commission for the selecting this project that showcases student work. Special thank you to Blackwing for their generous donation to supply students with their fabulous pencils. And a huge thank you to the Stockton Fair Oaks community for their positivity and support of this project and the hope that it produces more projects for the community in the near future.

You can find the most current information on FB about the project:  @flipinmagic