Those participating in putting up images of students and staff on Biola’s walls are getting right back to Los Angeles’ roots with street art. Just as the spring 2011 issue of Biola Magazine suggests, Biola is making a “push to return to its birthplace [Los Angeles].”

Street artist inspires Biola students’ campus project

Inspired by the dream of the 2011 TED Prize award winner, JR, whose work won him the $100,000 prize, Biola is placing large scale black-and-white photos of Biolans onto the walls and stairs of the campus. JR’s dream, that Biola has now adopted, is to “transform messages of personal identity” by first posting them online, as Biola has done on the “Inside Out” Tumblr, and then exhibiting the photos in one’s own community.

Pictures of students, faculty and staff can be found all around campus, including eight images at the front of the library, six images on the stairs leading up to the registrar office, as well as three images on the stairs leading up to the fountain.

Creative stunts characterize street art

Los Angeles has hosted street art icons like Shepard Fairey, whose art is now on display at the exhibit “Art in the Streets” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Another representative of street art is Banksy, a mysterious figure from Britain who, while his identity is unknown, has perhaps the most well-known street art in the world. He is famous for his stunts including creating a painted scene of a child escaping to paradise on a wall separating Palestine from Israel, placing a Guantanamo Bay dummy in Disneyland, and even painting a giant elephant with a wallpaper design that camouflaged the “elephant in the room.”

These are the artists that put large scale street art on the map. Both worked prominently in Los Angeles and many of their works can still be seen adorning walls and tops of buildings in the downtown area. While Biola’s picture project is entirely legal and done with the permission and approval of the school, they still use the same techniques as Banksy and Fairey. Using rollers and paste, street artists would create an iconic image and then duplicate it and paste it all around the city, just as Biolans are now doing.

Art coming out into the open

For many Christian schools, art consists of paintings that are kept indoors and in galleries and most of the pieces have a distinctly Christian significance. This is Biola’s chance to move toward expanding our expression of art to even more areas of campus, rather than just the Jesus mural.

Biola may have found the balance of mirroring the art of its birthplace, while standing just far enough apart. The new picture installment at Biola is a great step that shows the university is a place where art can be displayed without illegal means.

“Inside Out” project can open more doors

Ideally, the project would lead to more opportunities for students to propose projects that would represent Biola’s diversity in other artistic forms, and in other areas of campus. Diversity is not only shown by the different ethnic groups that make up our campus, but by the art that expresses students’ creativity.

The art gallery on campus is only so big, and for a campus that, as the Biola Magazine states, wants to get back to its birthplace, perhaps that push would include reflecting the art that Los Angeles loves. Hopefully the presentation of art continues and grows, because if the Biola Magazine is right and “We love L.A.,” then Biola will continue to try and match the city’s artistic nature.