Decorative Doors
One artist makes her mark on her local elementary school
DIGBY – Teachers and students at Digby Elementary can’t wait to get to school these days.
“It’s like a surprise package for the children every morning,” says principal Jane Sweeney. “They come in looking around to see which door she has painted and what it looks like.”
The walls and doors of the elementary school are getting a colourful and whimsical sprucing up thanks to local artist Tiffany Barrett.
She painted a welcoming multi-cultural mural in the main hallway in January and since then she has been slowly, one by one, painting classroom doors and even closet doors.
The teachers have provided Barrett with the idea for their door – a lot of it is Dr. Seuss or something they’ve seen on Pinterest, all of them have a quote or inspirational message and it’s all painted in Barrett’s unmistakable bright and cheerful style.
“It’s really made it a warm, welcoming environment,” says Sweeney. “The colours, the positive messages. When the mural went up, some of the younger children couldn’t read it, but I could see the older children reading it to them. It’s marvelous.”
It was Sweeney’s idea to have Barrett in to paint the mural and then the head of the Home and School, Sarah Theriault, thought it would be nice to paint doors for the teachers as part of teacher appreciation week – an annual event at the school.
Last year Home and School bought the teachers a fridge for their staff room.
This year, hoping to do something more personal, they offered to have Barrett paint doors for teachers who wanted it done.
“At first it was just going to be one or two,” says Theriault. “But once she did the first one, the teachers got excited by the idea.”
Theriault says the children and parents love it, too.
“Especially in the winter, it can be so dreary,” she said. “The painting has really changed things. It’s nice to have all the excitement and positive talk around the school.”
So far Barrett has done 16 classroom doors and as an added bonus she painted inspirational quotes on several closets as well.
Barrett insists painting is just a hobby, albeit a hobby with a life of its own.
It all started last winter when a friend, Tammy Lewis, sent her a text message with a photo of a painting she saw on Etsy. Lewis told her she wanted the painting for her office but didn’t want to pay the $300 the artist was asking for it.
And a little while later, Lewis also gave Barrett a plastic tub full of old painting supplies.
Barrett was busy at the time renovating her new house and just happened to have a big stack of left over mahogany plywood pieces.
“I’ve always been crafty, I’ve always dabbled and doodled,” she says. And I hate to waste anything, so the wood pieces were perfect.
“And I looked at the picture she sent me again, and I thought, I know I can paint that.” And she did. Lewis posted a photo of the finished piece on Facebook.
“And then it just went crazy,” said Barrett. “I couldn’t keep up with the comments and the compliments and the requests to paint for people.”
Barrett has four jobs already, as a crosswalk guard, a duty aid, a dairy rep and a travel agent, not to mention mother to a five-year-old son.
Each door takes a few hours. She paints them in the evenings, while her son reads or plays beside her.
“He’s so cute. He says ‘ My mom did that, my mom did that’,” she says. “The kids ask me in the crosswalk, have you painted my door yet? At the grocery store putting milk on the shelves, people tell me how much they love the doors.”
And then a text comes in from a Digby teacher, away at a meeting in Weymouth.
“We’re talking about you here,” says the message. “They love what you’re doing with the doors.”