06 September 2015

Dishing Out Science by Laura Jean McLaughlin

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Artist Laura Jean McLaughlin teamed up with a group of kids from the nearby Parental Stress Center to create this mural. This was Ms McLaughlin’s first mosaic. She must have enjoyed making it because we’ve found several others in the area that she’s made since this one.

The idea started with a group called Explanatoids which involved the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) School of Design, the University of Pittsburgh Learning and Research Development Center, Family Communications, Inc, and the Girls, Math and Science Partnership. Their goal was to encourage kids to explore science in everyday life. For this project they wanted to make something to promote nutrition for underpriveged children.

They asked for people to donate broken dishes, old mirrors, or whatever other items could be used to make the mosaic, and arranged for Laura Jean McLaughlin to handle the creative process. Explanatoids had two themes they wanted incorporated into the mural: Nutrition and health was one. The other was conservation of matter which was explained in a CMU press release as where does your food come from?. They wanted the kids that worked on this mural to do more than just glue the pieces where someone told them to. They wanted them to learn about the entire process and to think about the theme and make their own contributions to it.

The mural itself not only shows healthy foods spilling from a bowl, but mixed in with the fruits, fish and meat are the molecular structures of some of that food.

Summary:

Artist(s): Laura Jean McLaughlin and many young volunteers
Address: 5880 Centre Ave
City:Pittsburgh (East Liberty)
Zip Code: 15206

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Twitter: @PghMurals

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