Ceramic Mural
St John The Baptist Primary School, Ferntree Gully, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Artists: Jenny Saulwick, the children, the parents and the teachers.

Concept
A ceramic mural was designed for the back of the school’s library wall. Tiles were made jointly by the artist, Jenny Saulwick and the children of the school to depict the adjacent hills as a 'dreaming spirit guardian' of the Dandenong Ranges. The dreaming spirit is depicted lying on its side overlooking the City of Melbourne. The spirit is inviting the children of the school to join with it to protect the animals, birds and plants of the Dandenong Ranges.
To this end during the first part of the artist's residency is telling (talking) the story to the children by the artist about the dreaming spirit named Corhanwarrabul. This name was given to the range by the aboriginals before white settlement. The story talks about how the roads and houses developed by white people run across and over the body of Corhanwarrabul, crossing its back, its torso, its arms, legs and feet, and its head.
These developments cause difficulty for Corhanwarrabul in keeping the animals, birds and plants of the Dandenong Ranges healthy and alive in their places. Birds like lyrebirds, fantails and honeyeaters, animals like the bandicoot, swamp wallaby and potoroo, plants and trees like ground and tree ferns, mountain ash and other eucalypts and wattles.
The artist's and children's story was used to identify the topics and colours for the tiles that were needed to develop a portrayal of the dreaming Corhanwarrabul with its birds, plants and animals.


The second part of the project involved the children and the artist making the tiles depicting their chosen birds, plants and animals, and then colouring the tiles and having them fired in a nearby kiln.
The third part of the project was to adhere the tiles to the library wall. The overall design depicted the Dandenong Ranges, that is the 'dreaming spirit Corhanwarrabul' lying on its side guarding the 'Dandenongs' and the City of Melbourne. So the tiles were placed in such a way that from a distance the design is seen as the Dandenong Ranges, and in close up individual tiles are seen as depicting the birds, plants and animals of the Dandenongs.
Helen Coulsen, in the Story of the Dandenongs wrote about the Dandenong Ranges and the koorie’s name, the Corhanwarrabul Range. I feel that by placing the story within an actual historical context that a relevance and strong creativity was established for the project, this has meant that the children's creativity and their imaginations were inspired. They also learnt a great deal from the project in terms of history, art and design and mathematics.

Jenny Saulwick. 1998