Imagination Station is inviting the public to contribute their own artwork to a large collage it plans to assemble and display.
The program, in partnership with the Glass City River Wall Project, encourages visitors to the Imagination Station to create a small piece of artwork that tells “their Toledo stories,” said Amy Mohr, a science museum spokesman.
Each piece of paper, about 4 inches square, will be pieced together to assemble the collage mural that will then be hung in the museum.
Thus far, artwork includes some animals at the Toledo Zoo, a family making tamales, and the words “T-Town Loves You” with a heart in the middle.
“We want to encourage creativity and get people involved, by using art as an outlet to tell personal stories,” Mrs. Mohr said, noting that, thus far, the reception has been “really good.”
“People like the idea that they can come and create something on their own and use their minds when they don’t think they are,” she said.
Sloan Eberly Mann, Imagination Station’s education director, said collaboration with the Glass City River Wall Project — projected to be the largest mural in the United States when completed on a Maumee River grain elevator later this month — was “natural” because the museum emphasizes both the arts and sciences, and the Glass City mural can be seen from the science center’s windows.
Visitors can find the collage-making space inside the museum’s Tinkering Center, which is littered with colored cotton balls, pipe cleaners, glue, and markers. Brooke Schlageter, an educational consultant working with the Glass City River Wall Project and Imagination Station to develop a curriculum surrounding mural art and storytelling, was making her own art square of Fifth Third Center, or the “big glass building,” in the museum Thursday.
“I never knew what that building was actually called,” she said. “I lived away from Toledo for a long time, and it really represents home to me.”
The curriculum she’s helping create will ultimately be sent to local schools and organizations and will emphasize the idea of “storytelling as a means of power,” as well as the history of Native American tribes living along the Maumee River. The Glass City mural will feature portraits of three Native Americans on three of the grain elevator’s silos.
Interested visitors can contribute to the collage through the end of August. And, through a partnership with the Sandpiper River Wall Watch Tour, people who ride the Sandpiper tour boat on Mondays or Wednesdays to observe the elevator mural’s progress can receive a discount at Imagination Station.
The science museum will also have staff at Toledo’s 2021 Jeep Fest for people to create their own square there.
“Each Toledo family or individual who comes can create their own square as a piece of a [collage] mural that will encompass the stories of many different Toledoans of different backgrounds,” Ms. Schlageter said. “We can tell our collective story of the city of Toledo with these individual stories.”
First Published August 5, 2021, 7:21 p.m.
