ViennArt Students Bring Art Into the Community

A Real-World Mural Project at Sheeba Yemeni Restaurant in Vienna

Photo caption: From left: Director KJ Lee, Juno Garver, Amy Rha, Kaitlyn Shin, Chaewon Kang, Abby Ko, Isabella Lim, Director Yunzi Liu, and Director Ann Pan, posing in front of the mural they created together.

At ViennArt Academy, we believe that art education should extend beyond the classroom. This summer, a group of our advanced students had the opportunity to bring their creativity into the local community by designing and painting a large-scale mural for Sheeba, a new Yemeni restaurant located at 111 Church Street in Vienna.

Sheeba is a family-owned restaurant business that originated in Minnesota, and the Vienna location is the family’s first franchise location.

The young local owner grew up in the Fairfax area and comes from a family with extensive restaurant experience. This is his first restaurant of his own, and he wanted the new location to have a meaningful connection with the local community.

That vision brought him to ViennArt Academy.

After visiting our studio and meeting with us, we began discussing an opportunity for our students to help bring the restaurant’s space to life through original artwork.

From the Classroom to a Real-World Project

For this project, we selected students from our advanced high school and college portfolio program based on their artistic skills, experience, and readiness to take on a professional-scale project.

Our goal was not simply to decorate a restaurant. We wanted to give our students an opportunity to experience what it is like to work on a real project for a real client while contributing their talents to the community.

The project took approximately three weeks to complete. Students attended their regular art portfolio classes at ViennArt Academy in the morning and then worked at the restaurant in the afternoons, often from around 2:00 PM until 6:30 or 7:00 PM.

Throughout the process, they experienced many aspects of a professional art project—from researching ideas and developing the concept to working on a large scale, collaborating as a team, and adapting their artwork to an actual commercial space.

Creating a Mural for Sheeba

The mural was designed to complement Sheeba’s Yemeni identity and the atmosphere of the new restaurant.

Our team researched a variety of traditional landscapes, architectural details, windows, houses, and cultural imagery. Different visual references and concepts were shared with the restaurant owner, who worked with our team to select the direction for the final mural.

The students then transformed that concept into a large-scale artwork created specifically for the restaurant.

For Chaewon Kang, who is interested in studying Illustration in college, the project became an important opportunity to share her artwork with people outside the studio. She hopes her work can eventually inspire others, and she described this experience as a first step toward sharing her art with a wider audience.

Isabella Lim especially enjoyed the opportunity to work at a scale that students rarely experience in a traditional art class.

“Working on such a large-scale project was really fun since it’s not something you typically do.”

Although Isabella had previously had a small opportunity to work on a mural, the Sheeba project gave her the chance to participate in a much larger collaborative work that will become a permanent part of a public space.

Art, Education, and Our Community

This project represents what we hope our students can experience at ViennArt Academy: taking the skills they develop in the studio and discovering how those skills can connect to the world around them.

Beyond painting techniques, the students learned how to work with a real client, collaborate with one another, manage a large-scale project, solve problems on site, and see an artistic concept develop into a finished work in a public space.

For students preparing for college and future careers in art and design, experiences like this can also become a meaningful part of their portfolios and artistic development.

When Sheeba Yemeni Restaurant at 111 Church Street opens its doors, our students will be able to visit with their families and friends and see something very special on the walls—an artwork they created together for their own community.

We are proud of our students for bringing their creativity beyond the classroom and helping welcome a new local business to Vienna through art.

We look forward to seeing Sheeba open its doors and becoming part of the Vienna community!