John Leamy III wants to create a museum at Bret Harte Middle School.
As students and staff enter the hallway outside his art classroom, they’re greeted by floor-to-ceiling murals of local and national civil rights icons, including Stacey Abrams, Cesar Chavez, and Frederick Douglass. Sunlight through the windows opposite the mural walls illuminate the bright blues, greens, reds, and yellows of the portraits, which are set inside colorful geometric patterns called mandalas.
More than 100 students contributed to the Heroic Murals Pedagogy Project, a collaboration between Leamy and the Center for ArtEsteem, a 35-year-old arts education organization based in West Oakland, along with students from the California College of the Arts, where Leamy also teaches. Last week, Leamy and the center–formerly known as the Attitudinal Healing Connection–presented the paintings, the culmination of an effort that began in 2022.
“I believe in painting as a form of activism and protest,” said Leamy, in his fourth year as art teacher at Bret Harte. “The aim was to produce a series of monumental murals that look like the people that are here and, at the same time, teach painting.”
The project has evolved into a dynamic mural exhibit involving dozens of contributors, not to mention a new way to engage wayward students. If a student is distracted during a lesson or maybe skylarking in the hallway when they should be in class, Leamy puts a paintbrush in their hand. Go paint for a bit, he’ll tell them. They come back in ready to learn, he said.
Principal April Harris-Jackson also sees the mural project as part of the school’s culture of restorative justice.
“It’s not uncommon for a student who has had some sort of conflict to work through their issue by participating in the mural creations,” she told The Oaklandside. “Creating this mural enables them to make a connection to their school as well. You’re less likely to see a place as undesirable if you’ve been part of making it a beautiful space.”
Jam Gray, a teaching artist with the Center for ArtEsteem who contributed to the murals, noted that art can turn a dull environment into a more joyful one.
“When I was in school, it was very prisonlike. When you add art, you have the walls filled with history. It makes it feel alive,” Gray said.
The mural project began with paintings of Douglass and Abrams. Last year, “The Three Queens” mural was added, featuring abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant; Oakland Tribune columnist Delilah Beasley; and Queen Lili’uokalani, the last sovereign monarch of Hawaii. There’s also a portrait of Mexican painter David Alfaro Siquieros.
This year, mural subjects include Aeeshah and Kokomon Clottey, who cofounded Attitudinal Healing Connection in 1989; Antoine Hunter, a deaf choreographer and the founder of Urban Jazz Dance; abolitionist John Brown; historian Ronald Takaki; and labor leader Cesar Chavez.
Last week, Aeeshah and Kokomon Clottey were photographed in front of their portraits.
“It feels great to be immortalized,” Aeeshah Clottey told The Oaklandside.
Her daughter, Amana Harris, is currently the executive director for the Center for ArtEsteem. She previously worked as a substitute teacher in Oakland public schools and saw the need for students to have outlets like art.
“When there’s young people who need alternative ways of engaging in education and from a community-based perspective, that’s when I started to volunteer at my mom’s organization,” Harris told The Oaklandside. “We look at art as a way to build self-esteem and deepen our understanding about how to communicate with one another.”
In addition to beautifying the school and keeping students engaged, they’re also able to learn about local and national figures who have positively impacted the world, Leamy said. He envisions students going on gallery walks and choosing one of the heroes as a subject for a research projec. Plaques next to each of the portraits include a description of the person and list the names of all the students and teaching artists who contributed to the artwork.
Leamy hopes to keep creating murals next year and turn the project into an alternative detention program, in the hopes that students might focus their energies on more creative pursuits.
“My vision,” he said, “is to continue making these murals for the next five to 10 years–to create a cultural museum that reflects public education and that speaks to the culture and people here in East Oakland.”
