Community art
Students help create ceramic tiles for outdoor mural in Arnold
Fourth-graders at Hazel Fischer Elementary School are among a group of students recruited to help create, draw, make, paint and glaze ceramic tiles of Calaveras Big Trees and Stanislaus National Forest scenes for a mural that is now displayed on the exterior of Arnold Branch of the Calaveras County Library on Blagen Road in Arnold.
“I made a little tree with a branch,” Ian Rohrbach, 9, said Friday in a phone interview with three classmates, who also helped with the mural, and a Hazel Fischer Elementary school administrator. “I drew it and made it with clay, then painted it and glazed it.”
Each tile students created is about the size of a softball or a grapefruit, Rohrbach said. The painted, glazed tiles were all baked in a kiln oven to harden the exterior glaze and increase their resistance to weather, for outdoors display.
“I made a dogwood branch with leaves and flowers,” said Cara Bishop, 9.
“I drew a dogwood flower,” Ryan Rogers, 10, said, adding that she included “a yellow leaf” in her depiction for the mural.
Liam Hungerford, 9, said he made a tree, with the view zoomed in on a branch, with snow on the branch to show it’s wintertime. There was also a frog in the scene, Hungerford said.
Adults in Arnold are billing the mural as “Arnold’s First Large-scale Outdoor Work of Art.” Rohrbach, Bishop, Rogers and Hungerford said Friday it was fun to help out on the project.
“The mural is about the four seasons and the forest,” Hungerford said. “What the forest looks like in winter, spring, summer and fall. It’s what we remember seeing in the forest.”
“I think it’s both Calaveras Big Trees and the Stanislaus National Forest,” Bishop said of scenes depicted in the mural. “Because there are sequoias and other kinds of pine trees in it.”
Friends of the Arnold Library and a $2,000 grant from Calaveras County Community Foundation helped make the mural possible, according to an announcement distributed last week.
Work on the ceramic tiles began in early 2020, before COVID-19 lockdowns at Mother Lode schools. A total of 184 Hazel Fischer Elementary students and 14 homeschool students made the 198 tiles that comprise the finished mural, Marcie Powers, a spokeswoman for Friends of the Arnold Library, said Friday in a phone interview.
The idea for the mural came from Merita Callaway, the elected supervisor for Calaveras County’s District 3, which includes Arnold and Calaveras Big Trees State Park, according to Friends of the Arnold Library.
Robyn Slakey, a children’s art teacher for 40 years, helped oversee the mural project and shared photos Friday of her holding individual tiles created by youngsters, and photos of a contract worker using a drill to install the tiles on the exterior of Arnold Branch Library.
The finished mural is 17 feet wide and 3 feet high, Powers said. The COVID-19 pandemic slowed completion of the mural project. Hazel Fischer El students, from kindergarten through fifth grade, “kept the art project going through 2020 and into 2021, as they met with the artist, sometimes outside with masks on, sometimes via Zoom, to complete the project,” Powers said.
Friends of the Arnold Library is a volunteer nonprofit group set up to support the Arnold Branch Library through used book sales, fundraisers and community outreach.
“We are thrilled and proud to announce the completion of this charming, colorful giant mural that the children of Arnold and the community can take pride in for years to come,” Ann Robb, Friends of the Arnold Library president, said in prepared remarks. “We’d like to thank not only the creative children of our town, but also the numerous people who helped make it happen.”
Robb listed Slakey, Pamela Quyle of Quyle Kilns in Murphys, contractor David Morgan, Powers, Lisa Applegate, Hazel Fischer Elementary students, parents, teachers, and staff, including principal Ray Fausel, Calaveras County Community Foundation, and Nancy Giddens, the Calaveras County librarian.
For more information about Friends of the Arnold Library, email friendsofthearnoldlibrary@gmail.com.