(gentle orchestral music) - The American Mural Project is the world's largest indoor collaborative mural.

As a tribute to working Americans I wanted to make these people come alive.

And that's what happens in the mural because once you know the people you then see the value in the things they do.

What I'm seeing here are really amazing role models, people I want to know more about, maybe I even want to be one of these guys.

(gentle orchestral music) I want people to see this because it matters to me and I want it to matter to them.

(gentle orchestral music) All your life from the time you're younger and you start to follow enthusiasm also things start to click about what you like.

What is exciting for you.

And even today when I'm talking to kids, I'm saying, take it easy.

Just keep going with what you love.

And then as it takes a turn, you take that turn and you'll steer yourself in the right direction.

And I think that's exactly what happened for me.

We were big sports fans and so as I got into college, I started thinking, I wanna work for Sports Illustrated.

Great opportunity to see athletes one-on-one.

I really wanted to follow Ali.

And so I went up to Deer Lake where he trained.

He would finish sparring by about seven o'clock in the morning and he talked to each kid and then he'd sign an autograph and then he'd talk to the next kid.

And that went on and on.

I mean, that stays with you forever.

A lot of the time I've spent with these people, invaluable.

I mean it formed who I am, I think, to a certain extent.

And in that came, I think, the desire to do this, the mural project.

I started spending more time at home painting and I realized going from sports and what interested me there, that I liked painting people and I liked painting people who were working.

So I wanted, I wanted to capture that.

In the late '70s my husband Sam surprised me with a trip.

We were in LA and he took me to the Watts Towers all the work of one man.

Simon Rodia decided as an immigrant to walk out one day and thank this country for giving him entry.

And so he started to create these towers.

But the most exciting part about what this man did all by himself is he embedded in the concrete and wire all sorts of broken glass shards and scraps and pieces of things.

And as he did it, kids in the neighborhood would bring things to him and leave them at his doorstep.

Anything the kids left, he embedded it into the towers.

There's the moment of collaboration, that's been with me ever since and motivated the American Mural Project.

I went out to Boeing to create a painting of the fabrication of 747.

I was blown away by the scale and I said, "Wouldn't it be awesome if you could look up 30 feet and see the engine going on that fuselage."

Everybody thought it was crazy but I kept thinking, that's what this subject needs, scale.

(gentle orchestral music) And I kept fantasizing about this giant mural and then I started thinking what if you put all the working places you've been into one painting this giant so you're really honoring working people.

That was the start of the idea.

My home studio is like heaven.

It's as big as half a basketball court so it should be plenty big enough.

But once I had this idea of creating a mural now I had to think about how are you fitting all these pieces together?

They needed to all weave together in a composition that really worked.

So I started creating these large paintings in my studio.

I would take each element from the study and blow it up an inch to the foot.

So these things grew up around the and they closed the studio in slowly and that went on for years 10, 12.

And as I painted, the room got smaller and so the whole mural existed in my studio in layers.

When we started looking for a home for the mural project there are all these gorgeous mill buildings all over New England.

I was adamant about putting it in a place where work was done not only because you get a certain feeling from that that is very different and special but also these buildings are America's cathedrals and if we are going to protect the history of our country it's by saving these old, gorgeous mill buildings.

We'll never build 'em like this again.

This is the right place for this project.

It was at the very beginning of creating all of these pieces that I decided I wanted to involve young people in the process.

Because if I was so interested in bringing kids in and getting them involved emotionally, they needed to be involved physically, I went, alright, I'm going to all 50 states and I'm working with kids on projects across this country because this is what this mural project's all about.

What we've been doing across the country with these kids is exactly why I started this.

So I'm not ending it here.

This is only a beginning and I'm always saying, we are about collaboration and inclusion.

Michelle Begley gets that.

Our future is the expansion of this idea over into that other building.

So we have 200 kids working here doing, we're welding, playing instruments, printing prints, you name it, we wanna do it.

- When the sky's the limit, how do you narrow your focus?

Landing on the Art of Work as an umbrella for everything was really key because then it gave us a way to think about what both of those things are and how they relate to one another.

Within all of our programs, we're looking for a few things to happen that line up with the AMP mission.

We're looking for like a deep personal creativity.

We're also really looking for collaboration.

We're looking for everyone who walks in the door into any program to learn about working together.

We're looking for them to think about art in a more expansive way.

- They give you the materials to work with and then you can build or make anything you want.

(upbeat music) - The teaching artists that this place is attracted are just, they're incredible.

They come here with so much energy, so many amazing ways of approaching how to like achieve all these goals of collaboration.

The goal of like really deep creativity.

All of our teaching artists are so adept at making that happen.

- If you're talking about paying tribute to workers, you want to have a certain effect on people who see this because of scale and because of what we've been able to do with many people.

Each one of them asks that question, how can I get involved?

How can I walk out of here today and do something that's gonna make a difference?

- In every group that walks in to AMP there's always this moment of just like stunned silence.

Everyone has a really different way of connecting with this artwork.

It's highly individual.

There are so many stories to explore.

It's just basically like a wall of stories and there's something there for everyone.

- I love how the mural is so collaborative.

It's so many people being creative to make one big project, and I think it came together really nicely.

- I love it.

It's amazing that like, so many people got to help make it.

- I like the history of it because it was a tribute to all the working people in America.

People should understand the people who made America such a great country.

- This place is, it's jaw dropping.

- It's a very different kind of program and it's gonna create a lot of new imagination for people and possibilities.

- I'm thinking about all those kids and their reaction and everything and how rewarding it is when they have these wonderful reactions when they tell you, you ask yourself for 22 years as you crazily keep going and keep painting and keep building and putting one thing on top of another.

Is this gonna matter to people?

And there's nothing more gratifying than when I'm in here and someone says, "I just want to tell you, I can't even, there are no words.

I'm so blown away by this."

Because it's important that whatever it is that I hoped would happen when you saw it seems to be happening for a lot of people and a lot of kids.

When a kid walks through this room who's about eight years old and stops and looks and then says something to you about what's happening for him or her, you go, job done.

That's it.