University of Colorado Boulder senior Julia Harris, left, and sophomore Antonio Paredes draw with chalk on the sidewalk outside of the Visual Arts Complex on Tuesday, April 16, 2024. They hope their mural will encourage students to think before they buy. (Celia Frazier/CU Independent)
Armed with sidewalk chalk and a message to spread, four University of Colorado Boulder students gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Visual Arts Complex on Tuesday to create a mural.
The students, working on a final project for their environmental studies class, hope their art will encourage students and others walking past to think before they buy.
“We want to show how overconsumption can lead to pollution,” said Callie Patras, one of the students working on the mural.
The group came up with the topic after group member Antonio Paredes, a CU Boulder sophomore, watched “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion,” a documentary that dives into the unethical and unsustainable practices of the Brandy Melville brand.
“I just hate fast fashion,” Paredes said.
The group spent the afternoon drawing an “underwater snapshot” depicting clothes, trash and a Stanley Cup floating in a blue sea.
The art was inspired by a photo the group came across in their research. The photo depicts the coast of Ghana, where an excess of secondhand clothes pollute beaches.
“It was more clothes than water washing up on the shore,” said Julia Harris, a senior majoring in environmental studies.
The students created the mural for their Environment, Media and Society class, which, according to Professor Lee Frankel-Goldwater, allows students to create a “creative media advocacy project” on a topic of their choice.
“There’s just so much freedom with it,” said Morgan Fox, a sophomore studying ecology and evolutionary biology. “It’s not like you have to write a paper about this specific topic and you have to like it. You are just able to be more free with whatever you’re doing.”
University of Colorado Boulder sophomore Callie Patras draws with chalk on the sidewalk outside of the Visual Arts Complex on Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (Celia Frazier/CU Independent)
As part of their project, the group posted flyers with a short survey students can take about their social media use and consumer habits.
Patras, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies, said she hoped the mural would have more of an impact.
“Just doing a survey didn’t feel like enough, and also flyers, I feel like nobody really reads flyers anymore,” Patras said. “I think a mural is something that people will look at; it’ll draw their attention.”
Harris said the class allowed the group to have fun while also thinking about how to spread awareness about fast fashion and overconsumption.
“I really liked that this project gave us the freedom to really come up with anything,” she said. “Most projects it’s like, ‘make a presentation, do research’ and this one it’s really making you think ‘how do you want to convey this problem to people? How do you want to spread a message?’”
Contact CU Independent Editor-in-Chief Celia Frazier at celia.frazier@colorado.edu
