Hillsborough County Public School issued the following announcement.
TRIBE Seminole Heights sponsored Rojo the artist (Jorge Roldan), to paint the world's largest Kobe Bryant mural on Seminole Heights' basketball court. Rojo is a young, talented artist that attended Hillsborough County Public Schools, graduating from Durant High School. More than 250 hours of painting creativity and dedication went into this piece; it took him one month to paint the 8,000 square foot court. He used the school colors, which also happen to be Kobe's team colors of yellow and purple, to create the design. He also incorporated the school name on the painted basketball and Kobe's daughter's basketball jersey number on the court.
"We're excited to reveal this Kobe mural for our students to see that they can dream big and achieve their goals just like he did! He embodied the ideals of hard work and perseverance that we try to instill in our students every day. This project also exposes our students to the power and inspiration that art can have on an entire community," said Principal Francine Lazarus.
Aside from the court being a great visual for students and the community, the goal is to use this art piece to inspire the hard work mentality that Kobe always strived to live by and message out to his fans and community.
This project would not be possible without the support from TRIBE Seminole Heights, a non-profit community center located across the street from the school. Aside from providing 50 activities a week for students throughout the community, TRIBE supports Seminole Heights Elementary and Broward Elementary throughout the year. You will find artwork all over campus thanks to TRIBE and their collaboration with local artists. TRIBE also offers free after school gardening and hip hop dance classes to the students at Seminole Heights Elementary. It has a stocked community closet available for students and families in need.
"Art is such a positive thing to be around; the more you are surrounded by it, the more you think you can be an artist, so we wanted to be able to share that philosophy with the students and make sure they see art everywhere at their beautiful school to brighten their days," Kristen Brown, TRIBE Director.
Seminole Heights Elementary is a Leader in Me School, and with that in mind, TRIBE Seminole Heights made sure to incorporated Kobe quotes into the school's leadership program. You can find these inspiring posters throughout campus.
"Many of his sentiments echo the 7' Leader in Me' habits the school is trying to instill in the students, but it sounds just a little cooler coming from Kobe," said Kristin Brown, TRIBE Seminole Heights Founder.
Aside from the basketball court mural, Rojo created fourteen sidewalk art paintings of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids to remind students of the habits as they walk on campus.
When TRIBE founder Kristin Brown isn't just busy running a non-profit and supporting the schools in the area, she is also a proud mother of a Seminole Heights Elementary student. Kristen knew she wanted to help the school, so she looked into reasonable, cost-effective ways by leveraging resources from the community and found those willing to help.
"I just want to help provide the extra little things that are hard for the school to accomplish on their own due to time and budget," said Kristen.
Original source can be found here.
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