Back in 1999, the nun who was the principal at our sons' Catholic grade school asked me to paint some artwork on the hallway walls of the basement level of the building, where the kindergarten classrooms, nurse's office, library, and several storage rooms were located. The theme was to be "multi-culturalism" (which at the time I didn't realize had a bit of an agenda associated with it), and I decided to paint children of all different colors from all over the world, with the words "Be friends...love one another..." and "We are all children of God...all precious in His sight... all beautiful..." written beneath them. I was only able to paint two of the images full-length, facing each other from either side of the end of the hallway. Here's my youngest son (when he was a WHOLE LOT SHORTER than he is today) standing next to one of these almost life-sized children, shortly after I'd finished the job and put my paints and brushes away.
Just beyond where my son is standing in this picture, there were wooden cubbies for the students' coats, boots, and backpacks on the bottom half of the walls on either side, so for the rest of the children, I painted only faces--surrounded by glittering golden stars--floating above those.
Recently, I was made aware that since the school has grown and changed (and the pre-K and kindergarten rooms are no longer located along this basement hallway), there are plans to paint over the images I so painstakingly applied to the walls, during quiet after-school hours in 3- and 4-hour sessions. These faces of God's children will no longer go with the decor that is planned for this area of the school, which will include trophy cases and framed memorabilia from its 100 years of serving the area's Catholic families. Therefore, I thought I'd better go and get some pictures of my babies before they're gone for good, hidden away forever under a fresh coat of paint.
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Ahhh!! So. much. talent. Beautiful work.
ReplyDeleteThanks to my darling girl. You're very sweet.
DeleteBut I may pull this post off my blog. I feel kind of weird now that I posted all that artwork. I wanted to blog about it, because it'll be gone soon and I wanted the boys to have a remembrance of it. But I don't know if I should have shared it with the whole world (or my very small part of the world...the 10 or so non-Pearls who might see this post!).
Wow!!! That is awesome art work.
ReplyDeleteIt should be preserved.
Thanks! It was fun to do--I truly enjoyed volunteering my time, doing something I loved, for the school.
DeleteDon't pull off your post!!! Thank you for sharing, didn't realise you were also talented artistically! Is there anyway to copy the work before it is painted over? Like imprinting it onto a sheet somehow?
ReplyDeleteI was told that the school would have professional pictures taken of the paintings, and then they would find an appropriate place to hang the framed copies.
DeleteThe killer is that I did a whole lot of other painting for the school, in an area over the gym that was turned into a pre-K; then they painted over that when they moved the pre-K to another building. And ironically, the pre-K is now moving back to that original area over the gym. I had done all these Mother Goose and Winnie the Pooh paintings, and all kinds of animals...oh well!
This is awesome - I had no idea you were such a talented artist! What an awesome way to share your gift :)
ReplyDeleteI did love doing this, because it was for my boys' school. :)
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