Spreading positivity through authentic art
Inspired by a film, an Honors Program course crafts colorful rocks
By Lauren Shaw, Junior in the Diederich College of Communication and feature story intern for the Office of Marketing and Communication
After a difficult summer filled with challenges from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, social justice issues and more, Dr. Melissa Shew knew she needed a productive, constructive way to bring about some much-needed light, creativity and encouragement to her students this fall.
Shew, a visiting professor of philosophy in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, did some brainstorming and decided to have students in her one-credit HOPR 3957 class watch the short documentary film, “The Guerilla Bunny,” at midterms.
The course — Authenticity: On Being in a Strange World — is offered as a special senior capstone experience course through the Honors Program, in which Shew teaches in addition to her courses in other departments.
What followed the film presentation was the class’s own public art project designed to bring smiles to those walking through Marquette’s campus and provide an outlet for students’ own self-expression.
“The Guerilla Bunny” takes viewers for a wild tour through the importance of artist expression in our world, showcasing a unique public art project out of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Each year since 2008, an anonymous artist known as the “Guerilla Bunny” hides intricate hand-painted eggs throughout the town. According to the film’s website, the eggs are “gifts of divination each with their own fates, and every year search for their ‘finder,’ to offer their gifts of magic, divination and inspiration for the coming year.”
In 2020, the Guerilla Bunny expanded the public art project, hiding more than 100 eggs in Berkshire County and Eastern New York State during the Summer Solstice. The artist describes herself as a “spiritual warrior” who responds to the world’s darkness through her art.
Shew, who first learned of the documentary in August on social media, says she was inspired by the film’s focus on the artist’s need to create, what the art means to the artist and what the arts means to those who discover it. She thought her students could benefit from the film’s message and use the story to build their own creative outlets.
“The Guerilla Bunny concept is so interesting and puts it into perspective that you don’t have to know who made the art to appreciate it,” Shew says.
Shew contacted the film’s director Richard Sands to gain access to watching the short documentary, which was not available for public viewing. Shew shared her course syllabus and information about ideas related to authenticity in the course that connect with the film’s themes.
By the end of their correspondence, Sands, as well as the film’s producer, Sophia Deboer, and the Guerilla Bunny herself agreed to join the class remotely via Microsoft Teams for a Q&A session after viewing the film together.
That class session was a surprise to Shew’s students, as was the subsequent art project in which Shew brought in rocks collected from Lake Michigan and art supplies for students to decorate their own “eggs” and leave them around campus for the Marquette community to find.
Students passed that 75-minute class period in near silence while Shew played music, with each student focused solely on the small rocks in front of them. After, students placed their painted rocks across campus — the idea being the rocks would be found by passersby in need of some good vibes, inspiration, and unexpected art.
Maddie Smith, a senior speech pathology and audiology major in Shew’s class, said even though the rocks were meant to brighten the day of those who would stumble across them, she and the other students who painted them also got something very valuable from the experience.
“I think our class’s experience with ‘The Guerilla Bunny’ and the rock painting was very timely. We learned that the artist channeled her difficult challenges and emotions into a project that brings so much joy to others,” Smith says. “I feel that doing this rock painting project this year was especially important and impactful, because it allowed me to reflect on the struggles I’ve faced and what I wanted others going through similar situations to know. I hope I was able to spread a small message of encouragement or joy to whoever might’ve stumbled across the rock I painted.”
Shew says the project turned out to be a great exercise for the course because the course is meant to address what it means to be authentic in a multilayered world of confusion and challenges to our identities and experiences. The course looks to answer questions like “How do screens shape our understanding of reality?” as well as determine what the differences are between an original and a replica of something created.
“I’m a philosophy professor, so in arranging this film watch and rock painting project, I really thought about what it means for something to be authentic,” Shew says. “I think sometimes authentic experiences happen when they’re not expected, and I think this project was a way to bring that to the classroom where things might seem to be more formulaic or predictable.”
Shew says she even witnessed one person find a rock painted by one of her students. The passerby smiled and put it in their pocket.
“I told students at the beginning of the course — in fact, at the beginning of all of my classes this year — that a main goal I have for them this semester is to create,” Shew says. “Creating offers a powerful response to our world, especially now. I hope that students engaged in this project see that even little acts of creation can bring authentic expression to their own lives — and make the world at least a tiny bit less gloomy and more colorful in the process.”
