MURAL BREAKDS DOWN WALLS

Some portraits have eyes that seem to follow the viewer around the room. The mural on display at the University Center accomplishes the same feat because the three girls and three boys have 29 very different sets of eyes.

There are not quite so many noses and ears, but the mural shows that no matter how our parts and colors might differ we're basically made from the same stuff. In this case, the stuff is thumb nail-sized scraps of paper the Chicago-area student creators tore from 600 old National Geographic magazines.

Though it comes with poetry-free title "Building an Integrated Community in Aurora," the mural on display in the University Center Program Lounge through January speaks eloquently.

The mural was created in 1998 by 149 elementary, middle and high school students from Aurora and Lincolnwood, Ill., both suburbs of Chicago. Working independently as schools, they glued the thousands of tiny scraps of paper to 102 separate panels to form the 8-by-23-foot mural.

One of the mural's beauties is that the students had to have faith to create it, says Dr. Henry Azuma, who helped bring the mural to Southeast.

"Each one utilized his own cultural perspective, and none knew until it was finally completed the magnitude and scope of the final work," he says. "They had to take the first step of faith. When they finally viewed it, they ended up with magnificent piece of work."

"At times, art ... gets students to take the first step of faith in a cooperative manner," said Azuma, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at the university.

Besides the six main figures, the mural includes many more boys and girls in the background with buildings and blue sky. Up close, hidden symbols and even a "found" poetry become visible, gleaned again from those National Geographic pages.

"Had the first Polynesian settlers/This strange buck-toothed frost./I had almost lost the exhilaration of the Puffers have beautiful bones, for example./It was a glorious high, poles, boots, jacket, sweater, hat and goggles -- $2,000."

The mural is sponsored by Metromural, a nonprofit arts organization. It was brought to Southeast by Azuma, a cousin of Laura Hisako Pleines, wife of mural designer Ferdinand J. Pleines. An artist and social worker, Pleines first asked some of the students to draw self-portraits or to provide photographs of themselves. These were cut up to create the design Pleines then cut into 16-square-inch segments. Students at different schools tore pages from the National Geographics and pasted together the collage that became the mural.

The Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts and the Office e of the Assist to the President for Equity Issues are sponsoring the mural's stay at Southeast.

Some of the artwork created for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Art Contest will be displayed near the mural later this month.

The mural most recently appeared at a national convention for private schools. Fittingly, the mural was featured in the November issue of National Geographic magazine.