Local elementary art club paints fence mural to beautify community

Local elementary art club paints fence mural to beautify community

Making the community more beautiful is great, but nothing is better than the children of that community getting to do it! At Memorial Elementary School in Valparaiso, the children got just that opportunity. 

Art Teacher Gretchen Scott leads the art club at the elementary school, and when she was proposed the idea from a parent of beautifying a local fence, she loved it. Scott got together with her students to brainstorm various ideas of what they could paint for the mural.

There were a few requirements of the art club at Memorial Elementary. The children in the art club have to be upstanding students that are up to date on all their school work, as well as doing great in regular art class. 

While they have worked on many projects together, both in class and in art club, they had never tackled one this huge. However, Scott knew that her students were up for the task.

“This group of students had a lot of really great artistic skills," Scott said.

They worked together as a group to come up with their game plan, and from there, they broke up the work into various stages. The class began voting on what to paint on the fence. Ideas were thrown out of what to paint, one of them being a jungle theme. However, the kids decided on making it an outer space theme, with each “opening” in the fence being a different section of space. They sketched out their ideas on paper before making it onto the fence. The class had to make sure they were placing everything where they wanted before going in with the paint. Then, in the month of May, they began the actual painting process. 

The kids were able to do the bulk of the work on their own, with Scott assisting where needed. A huge part of this project was allowing her students to be independent in their process.

“I think the children learned that well designed collaborative artwork is not something that is thrown together on a whim. They learned necessary steps, including: design/concept, surface prep, sketch, assignment of painting roles, and the order/layers of painting,” Scott said.

She was extremely proud of her students, saying they all had a lot of patience and team skills to be able to complete this task. Scott believed the thing the students loved the most about the project was the ability to express their own ideas and playing at the park during painting breaks. The students were able to get a great experience of a large painting project, while also being able to contribute to their community. The mural is a permanent part of the town now, belonging to the family of the student who offered up the surface to the school. The family wanted to add artistic interest to the park area and surrounding community.

This mural can be seen on the fence leading to the Jesse Pifer Park right in Valparaiso. Go check out the students’ great work!