Art Survey students, with paintbrushes in hand, crowded around a miniature version of the mural they intended to project and paint on the exterior wall of Portable 202 by the end of the school year. The mural features ocean life from the Pacific Northwest and was chosen by Principal Abby Hunt, who also requested to hang a smaller version in her office.
Art teacher Katie Griffin sees the mural as an opportunity to showcase student creativity in a part of the campus that she says is somewhat bland.
“If you go out there and you look at the portables, they’re all very gray,” Griffin said. “It’s a really good opportunity to add some color and life to campus.”
The subject of the mural was decided partly by a survey filled out by students which gave options for broad themes. The top two most popular responses were Pacific Northwest oceans and coastlines and Pacific Northwest forests and mountains, both of which the Art Survey classes considered.
“Student voice is really important,” Griffin said, “Especially for an art piece that impacts everybody, because at the end of the day everybody has to look at it. So, we wanted to get ideas from as many people as possible.”
Still, Griffin wanted to balance input from the wider community with creative decisions from Art Survey students.
“I think surveys are interesting,” Griffin said. “I love hearing what people want to include in a piece of art, but I also think the creative process still needs to be protected in that we get the general theme from everybody and then we get to decide how to interpret it and how to bring it to life and how to best execute it.”
Each Art Survey student designed a mural based on the themes from the survey. Sophomore Iris Lynch was one of the students who helped decide which designs to work with.
“I was part of the Mural Leadership Team,” Lynch said. “It was about six people, and we took so many designs, I think one from every person in the class, and we just narrowed them down by a lot.”
They picked two designs to be finalists, and Principal Abby Hunt got the final say as to which one would be painted. The one she chose was made by sophomore Tessa Paulin, and freshman Felix McAllister made the runner-up. Still, the whole class worked together to perfect both designs before presenting them to Hunt.
“The best part is that neither of them are truly one person’s,” Lynch said. “Like, the one that I’m doing, that I’m drawing the mock-up for, it was originally drawn by someone else in the class, it was mocked up on the computer by Ms. Griffin, and now it’s being painted by me. And I think both of them are truly very collaborative and a work of a bunch of students.”
A public art unit in the Art Survey class helped prepare students to paint the mural. As part of the unit, the classes went on a field trip to the International District and Urban Artworks where they saw murals and learned about how to make them.
“We also got to work on our own mural in the basement of the building we were working in,” Paulin said. “It was really nice to see the process actually come together and see everybody actually working on a mural, and I think it helped us figure out what design choices were good and what design choices didn’t work as much.”
Because the whole class will be painting the mural together, it was important for them to build skills with art and painting during the field trip.
“We learned a lot from them about how they do it, and generally their techniques,” Lynch said. “We also got most of the kids in the class a lot of painting experience through the painting unit.”
The class will start painting the mural in June, so nighttime temperatures will be warm enough for the paint to dry. They will project an image of the mural on the wall and paint over it.
“I’m confident in the designs and the skill of everybody and I think it’s going to be really fun, especially to do in June when it’s nice outside,” Griffin said.
Lynch looks forward to adding color to the mostly monochromatic exterior of the school building.
“The hallways are gray, the outside of the building that’s not brick is gray, and it’s just kind of a sad color,” Lynch said. “From what I’ve seen already, other than maybe the price of the paint and the projector, for students to put together a good mural, it’s not all that much work.”
Griffin sees the mural as an opportunity to improve the campus and the school community for all students.
“It has an impact on everybody at the school,” Griffin said. “Everybody can see the mural. I know only a few people, only two classes, really get to paint it and are involved in the process of creating it, but it benefits everybody. It brightens up the school, and the portables are a great blank canvas.”
