What Brings Two Fifth Grade Classes,

located over 5,600 miles apart in Biddeford and Slemani together?

 Detroit-based artist Pat Perry,

 partnering with aptART and the Good Works Foundation, Perry’s most recent project took him to Maine and Iraq, where he collaboratively designed and painted a pair of murals with local schoolchildren, the two fifth grade classes, got to know each other by exchanging videos and artwork, they then assisted Perry with painting their own messages on the new murals,

surrounding each figure are doodles and messages written in both English and Arabic by Perry’s young collaborators,

 in each country,

 the kids put paint to brushes to the wall,

 the resulting project, OPENING LINES, depicts a child in each mural holding a red telephone, because their backs are turned, you have to imagine who is speaking and who is listening to who, 

the video above offers a glimpse behind the scenes of OPENING LINES, You can follow along with aptART’s youth programming on Instagram and explore more of Perry’s wide-ranging humanist work (including limited edition prints) on his website and Instagram, what a undertaking, but he did it.