NAHS finishes classroom mural, looks ahead to future projects

Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole is no easy task, but that’s essentially what NAHS has accomplished with their mural in Bearden teacher Ms. Amy Naill’s classroom.

Bearden senior Jacob Williams tackled the daunting task of gridding the mural, a process that required figuring out how to fit a square image on a rectangular workspace. The students painted a replica of Claude Monet’s classic “The Water-Lily Pond,” which is a square in the original.

“Everyone else put their hands down when [art teacher Mrs. Anna Boyd] said, ‘Gridding?’” Williams said. “I just put mine up because I thought, ‘Okay, it’s math. I can do this.’”

And he certainly did. NAHS worked on the mural for the final time on Wednesday.

“It’s good to be done with it because we’ve been working on it for a really long time, but I’ll miss hanging out with people from NAHS while working on it,” junior Esther Sitver said.

Sitver was a regular, returning to work on the mural weekly. Having regulars working on the mural was vital to creating a cohesive piece of artwork.

“Just working next to someone, you learn new techniques, and so just working on one project, you’ll notice the students take on each other’s styles, and it all fits and works together,” Mrs. Boyd said.

The mural began at an in-service day when Ms. Naill mentioned that she wanted a mural painted in her classroom. Mrs. Boyd remembered that NAHS students had previously expressed interest in tackling a mural, so she emailed Ms. Naill.

NAHS began work on the mural in the fall, but completing it took longer than anticipated because they were only able to work on it once a week or once every-other week after school on Wednesdays.

Now that they have completed the mural, NAHS is brainstorming for future projects. One project on the horizon is creating Valentine’s cards for a local nursing home.

“We deliver cards to give back and make the elderly feel appreciated in a season where it’s so much about couples, and a lot of [the elderly] live alone,” Mrs. Boyd said. “I think it’s a great experience, and hopefully, if we have time, we’ll actually get to go and deliver them in person.”

Aside from their Valentine’s cards project, NAHS could potentially be tackling another mural somewhere around the school in the near future.