Mural #48
Perry Elementary School
Shoemakersville, PA
Flowers #1,638 - #1,904 of 10,000
Completed March 2022
Chapter 8… Step up.
First mural of 2022 and we’re starting off with a big one! This mural had several different lives. First it was going to be installed on panels on the outside of the school, three stories tall, climbing up the side of the building. When that turned out to not be feasible, we were going to paint flowers growing out of all the outdoor windows. That was the plan until Laura O’Keefe, the school’s art teacher and Andrea Berger, the Principle, walked me to their “plane C”. A three-story stairwell overlooking the recess area. As soon as I saw that, I knew this was the place we had to paint.
It was the biggest undertaking to date. I spent a week sketching out the over 260 flowers and papered off the floors.
Over the next week, every student and teacher had a hand in filling in the design. Usually with this many volunteers we start to run out of areas to paint by the end of the week but not this one. This one everyone had their choice of where to paint and by Friday afternoon almost everything the students could reach was filled in beautifully.
I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of “post workshop” clean up that needed to be done so my friend Amy was kind enough to join the flower team and help bring this mural to its final form. Between the two of us and the amazing art teacher Mrs. O’Keefe working after school, we spent the next three weeks climbing ladders to fill in the tall flowers, applying second coats the areas that needed it and outlining sooo many flowers. At 266 flowers, this was the largest mural we had ever painted and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of artists to bring it to life with. Painting with them and our many trips to Casa Rico were some of the best memories from this project.
After the mural was completed on March 18th, we thought we needed to do something special to celebrate our first mural of 2022. This video was filmed by my amazingly talented friend Jorden Meeder.
