‘Go with the flow’
Southeastern Greene students paint mural through rural arts program
As a Mapletown Junior-Senior High School student walks to class, they might glimpse a white rabbit pointing to the time on a pocket watch.
If they’ve got enough time to ignore the rabbit’s warning, they might also notice the Red Queen, Alice, Humpty Dumpty and a menagerie of towering mushrooms and swirling vines.
They can thank some of their classmates for the bursts of color.
Mapletown students in Audrey Mlay’s art class worked with resident artist Diane Adams to create the mural partnership with the Rural Arts Collaborative. Funding came through the Benedum Center and EQT.
When Adams arrived at the school last fall, she talked with the students about her love of optical illusions.
How that theme got expressed would depend on what the students wanted to draw.
In discussions with Adams, the students showed a love for the works of Tim Burton, known for the blend of darkness and whimsy he brought to films like “Beetlejuice,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” — and, as reflected in the mural, his adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Adams sketched things out, then picked out a spot downstairs with the students.
During her regular visits since October, the mural gradually took shape.
Adams educates the students along the way, from adding the first coat of primer to translating the 1 inch on the sketchpad to 1 foot on the wall.
“They have a curriculum, and I’m off the grid on the curriculum,” she said. “I’m outside of that box, and I get to show them something they may never have known what to do.”
Students’ sketches inspired many of the final designs. In the busiest stretches, Adams was directing up to 10 students at a time, working on everything from detailed faces to filling in solid colors.
Twelfth-grader Miranda Fox enjoyed painting the mushrooms, blending colors together to make it look vibrant.
“Everytime I walk past, that’s the first thing I look at,” she said.
The project also got contributions from 12th-grader Makenna Lotspeich, a well-regarded art student at the school. Her work can be seen at several spots on the mural, including the White Rabbit.
There hadn’t been many opportunities at the school to do an art piece of that magnitude, she said.
And it let the kids network with each other, trading ideas and thought processes.
“To be able to paint something the size of the wall is pretty cool,” she said. “You get the whole visual at a way larger scale than what I’m used to.”
Mlay got to wield a brush alongside her students, painting Alice.
“I loved it,” she said. “It was nice being able to put some responsibility on somebody else and to learn new things.”
Southeastern Greene has a history of bringing in artists, said Scott Sinn, assistant to the principal, dating back to when artists from the Pittsburgh Art Institute would come to the district.
When he asks students what they remembered most from the year, it’s those outside-the-box experiences — murals, field trips out of the county — that always stick with them, Sinn said.
“I think it gives them a lot of pride when they come back and look what they did, the accomplishments, a lot of the skills they learn when they complete the project,” he said.
Though the class that helped put the mural together has moved on to a new semester, Adams is using subsequent visits to fill in the remaining background work.
Adams has helped out with other projects at the school, like a large nature painting in the entryway to celebrate the school’s centennial year.
Fox hopes the new mural becomes just as much of a fixture at the school.
“When painting, there’s no erasing, so you just have to go with the flow,” she said. “I love it. I hope it stays there, because all these people have put their dedication and hard work into it to make it look as good. It’s not finished yet, but it’s going to get there.”