The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Avon Lake students beautify hallways
Students at Avon Lake High School have taken it upon themselves to beautify their school’s hallways.
A group of National English Honor Society students is hard at work painting covers of well-known books on the hallway walls of the school’s English department.
“It was an idea that I had seen done, and I asked our group if they would be interested in doing something here,” said Krystine Frisch, English teacher at the school who, along with fellow teacher Hilary Bickerton, head up the Nation English Honor Society at the school. “It was something that I posed to students, and they really took it over and have led the project.”
Frisch said she likes what the project will do.
“It will really add some life to the hallways,” she said. “I’m glad the administration OK’d it.
“The students have made it happen because they have worked on it during their off time and are going to come in next week when there is no school on Thursday to finish them. These students are really driven.”
Jackie Grissinger, 17, a junior, said the group initially made the decision about what books they wanted to paint on the walls.
“We have some of the books near teachers’ doors, so some of them had suggestions and we also posed it to others in the NEHS (National English Honor Society) group to see what we could agree on,” Jackie said. “The covers include ‘The Maze Runner,’ ‘Life of Pi,’ ‘The Great Gatsby,’ ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Oh, the
Places You’ll Go!’ by Dr. Seuss.”
Students are working on the project in two parts.
“We are tracing right now and we will paint next,” Jackie said. “They (the covers) differ in difficulty; ‘The Hunger Games’ is a lot easier than the ‘The Great Gatsby’ cover.
“We have been tracing by hooking up a computer to a projector and pulling up a picture of the cover to trace.”
Kyle Loe, 17, a junior, said the students have had to divide up traces to make it work.
“We set up to do half of a cover one day and half the other on the next day,” Kyle said. “This is due to space and time issues.
“It’s been my job to find the image and pull it up. The image quality is pretty good, and the tracing results have looked very good. Overall, I think the project really decorates the halls.”
Sydney Affolter, 16, a sophomore, said she has been doing art projects her entire life.
“It started with cartoons and I have expanded to other types of drawings and paintings,” Sydney said. “With this project, it will be tricky because of the consistency issue with painting on walls and you have to do layers.
“It will be a challenge, but we’ll make it look good.”
Syd Ryan, 16, a sophomore, said the project is a really cool one to work on.
“When we get done, I think a lot of visitors in the halls will really be blown away,” Syd said. “Besides the maroon lockers, the hallways are very monotone. This gives the hallways more appeal.”
The students also wanted to mention Maiah Serazin, 16, a junior at Avon Lake High and a member of the group, for her help with tracing for the project.