Perfecting Nature's Beauty

National Art Honor Society has created a stunning mural for the Jarrett Nature Center that both advertises the location and purpose of the environmental classroom while also dressing up the side of a district maintenance building.

The colorful acrylic painting, which features the JNC's dragonfly logo as well as the many creatures and plants that can be found in the center, was completed this week by students and National Art Honor Society advisor Lauren Economou. The group had been working on the mural since September, after being approached by a JNC volunteer who asked the students to create a mural that would help market the JNC to people passing by the center's location off of Hatters Way, which is the road that connects the high school campus to campus.

A maintenance building that sits on the property adjacent to the JNC served as the students' canvas. The building's surface was prepped with several coats of light blue latex paint and while this work was taking place, National Art Honor Society co-presidents Allison Shaftel and Rachel Tritsch began researching the types of wildlife found at the nature center and incorporated their research with suggestions provided by center volunteer Kim Rubenstein as to what to feature. They created a design that included a turtle, raccoon, woodpecker and many different varieties of flowers and trees.

"We tried to incorporate a variety of those things without making the design look too crowded," said Economou. "Our goal was to capture the essence of the JNC in an inviting way."

Once the design was completed, Economou and six students spent an evening tracing the outline of the design onto the wall using Sharpie markers. The work had to be done at night and involved the use of several overhead projectors to project the large-scale image of the design onto the building wall.

After the outline was complete, students began painting on Oct. 20, with most of the society's 24 members pitching in at some point during that day. When painting the larger grassy and water areas in the foreground of the mural, students used large sponges. Then detail was added in with paintbrushes. On Nov. 8, the finishing touches were put on the mural.

"The students really enjoyed this project. We painted 'NAHS 2011-2012' onto one of the trees to make it looked like it was carved into the bark," said Economou. "We wanted the kids to be able to take ownership and credit for this project, of which they are so proud."