Leisure Park Elementary Murals

As a former public school teacher,  I completed many projects for the schools in which I worked.  The following photos are a blast from the past .... which unfortunately are now lost and gone forever.  Apparently someone in charge now thinks that pristine clean walls are more productive for our youth than a welcoming child centered atmosphere.  Sadly these murals that I designed and orchestrated with the help of may fellow teachers in our off-duty time as a gift to our students,  have been painted under.  No!   none!!  zero!!!  zilch!!!  attempt to contact the artists first so we could try to preserve it better in photos. The actual color was much more vivid than these photos show.  I am very sad that they are gone.  I hope someone has better photos than I do.  There were some Friday evenings that turned into the dawn on Saturday morning.  Hours and hours and hours of work vanished with the stroke of an uncaring pen that sent a note to the maintenance crew.  Oh well, the memory is sweet and so was the bonding with other teachers through art

There was sone concern initially that the teachers who wanted to paint murals beside their doors might not have the skill to created full bodied children.  I think that was an entirely overexaggerated concern.  Those teacher were much more creative than they realized.  So on the big murals in the foyer that are pictured here, the only big rule was that the figures had to be stick figures.  That always bothered me a bit, but I made the most of it by making cute faces and clothes.  The child in the tree wasbased on  my son, Lance,when he was a young boy, but with stick figure arms and legs....LOL

Hours an hours just on the tree bark an the butterflies.  The children loved this.

I can still recall the students's faces when they arrived at school and entered the building that first day after we completed the murals.  If we ever wondered whether the students would appreciate what we had done for them, our wonders were put to ease.  They ooohed and ahhhed as they walked inside.  

Much of this part of the murals was painted by the art teacher that worked there at that time.     I painted the stand that holds a real flag, but deliberately I made it look more like her style, without so much detail as the next sign below .

The orange plaque was already on the wall.  I painted the sign around it to make it appear that it was a sign in a park.  Afterall our school was called Leisure Park for the housing addition that surrounded it.  There was a park in this housing additrion called Leisure Park Park.  I always thought that to be funny.  So I suppose you could call this mural Leisure Park Park Park????? LOL

I hope I can find someone with a better photo of this part of the murals.  I did the painting to the left of the tree, incorporating the fire plug around the emergency fire handle by our front door   It was tricky to place a fire plug so high on the wall and try to get some perspective.  A bit out of balance, but placing it on a hillside helped.   There was also some kind of\ electric box on the wall (just above the pot of crimson flowers in the pot on the left) that I tried to make into some generic maintenance pole that you might find in a public place.  The house over the hill in the background represented the many homes in this housing additionl.

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Leisure Park was a wonderful school.  I taught third grade there in 1983 when it first opened, later moved to fifth grade.  We were so proud of our new school and a few years after it opened when the opportunity arose that we could paint the hallways, everyone was thrilled.  There were many other scenes throughout the school, painted by teachers who found their individual creativity and shared it beautifully with the children.  Though I designed and painted most of front foyer murals, it was a collaberative work. I taught many teachers how to apply paint to get desired results to make tree leaves.  It was a great bonding experience.  Not bad at all for a group of teachers who had little or no art background but a huge measure of desire. The little squirrel here was painted by my teammate in fifth grade who did have previous art experience.  Very cute, Glenda!