Wall-towall art
Murals at SLHS channel student creativity
Editor’s note: This is the first in a twopart series of stories profiling student artists at San Luis High School.
‘The halls of memory lane” might describe one of the best-kept secrets at San Luis High School, where student artists have been dazzling onlookers for 13 years with their ongoing series of mural projects.
Channeling their collective creativity, art students from every grade level at the school have been producing acrylic murals of pop artists, icons and their heritage on hallway walls and elsewhere that demonstrate imagination, finesse and beauty.
Their virtual art museum began when students of the school’s first graduating class in 2005 wanted to leave behind a class memento or gift. Some art students asked school officials’ permission to paint a mural.
Manuel Buchanan, art teacher there for 14 years, approached then-Principal Mary Lynn Coleman, who agreed, and the rest has been an ongoing history.
“I still have some of the murals that were on the walls that were created by them,” Buchanan said. It became a gift that keeps on giving. After that first class had graduated, the murals motivated incoming students to continue that inspiration. Both current and past students have contributed to the floor-to-ceiling
murals throughout the hallways, in classrooms and in other buildings.
Early into the mural projects, students and school officials decided that the sides of each hallway should have a theme. Now one hallway’s wall represents their predominantly Hispanic cultural heritage. Other hallway themes include music and the arts, popular icons and academic subjects.
“We started on this side of the wall with the idea of music and the arts,” said Lorenia Casaus, Fine Arts Department leader, pointing to the hall’s east side in the 600s Building. “The idea was to start with the theme of music.” Pointing to a portion of one mural, she added, “That lion right there is connected to Bob Marley music. And the student who painted it has already passed away. To me it is a very special piece of work.”
Losses such as this are not the only challenge for teachers and students alike in this endeavor. Students graduate, leaving unfinished art that others with similar artistic styles must complete. For instance, on the wall representing their cultural heritage is an isolated image of a warrior carrying an unconscious woman dressed in white.
“The way this thing was painted, it was really good,” said Buchanan. “But the artist graduated, and we haven’t seen them. That’s why it’s hard for someone else to continue somebody else’s work. But at the same time, we don’t want to paint over it because this is really good.”
Other unavoidable circumstances sometimes hinder progress on the murals. For one, Art Club advisor and teacher Jean Davidson’s husband passed away two years ago, resulting in the projects’ suspension for a time. In another instance, water from a faulty fire sprinkler damaged a mural created by former student Jesus Castello, who graduated before finishing it.
Another challenge for teachers and the students is having students working in the hallways on the murals during class time after they have finished their own art assignments.
“I have been on and off on this painting because when I am doing my other projects, I finish them and then come back to this,” said Luz Llamas, a junior who was adding the “Estados Unidos Mexicanos” emblem from Mexico’s flag to the cultural heritage wall.
“It’s kind of hard having a class and have kids painting in the hallways,” said Buchanan. “Mrs. Casaus and I kind of wanted to take a break from that. But ... we need to get going, keep moving. I know that the people from the district — when they come in, they want to come through here and see what your students are doing. So that’s a big motivation.”
Despite the challenges, some students are also motivated by a sense of humor. On one portion of the cultural heritage wall, students whimsically substituted some of the school’s teachers’ faces in the portraits of well-known cultural characters.
“That’s supposed to be me here,” said Buchanan, pointing to the upper part of his face peering over the top of a barrel, where he represents comedian El Chavo del Ocho.
Other character representations include English teacher Luisa Garcia for a beautiful actress, Maria Felix; marketing teacher Carlos Ambriz for the revolutionary General Emiliano Zapata; former teacher David Gonzales for Aztec warrior Cuahtemoc, and art teacher Casaus for Frida Kahlo, surrealist painter and wife of artist Diego Rivera.
Some of the artists’ detail in their projects becomes quite intricate, too.
“There is a student who graduated last year who has a beautiful painting about history,” said Buchanan, referring to Fernando Cabrera’s art in the 900s Building. “Oh, man, it’s beautiful! I saw that — I mean I’ve seen it before; but I was there the other day, and I was blown away,” he said, referring to the mural of a famous portrait of George Washington crossing the Delaware.
The motivation to work on the murals extends throughout the school’s grade levels, although sometimes the freshmen lack confidence in their abilities to participate.
“What we’ve done is try to handpick the ones that are very talented,” said Buchanan. “But we also have the students at the lower level. We teach them how to make a painting on the wall. It’s good for them because even the ones that don’t have a lot of talent, they see that they have the ability to do something amazing.” Pointing to a mural depicting flamenco dancers and Marilyn Monroe, he added, “This wall was created by Art I students. So a lot of students, when they see that, they think that it’s only the higher levels. I tell them, ‘No, this is all Art I.’”
Buchanan admits that admonishing the beginning students to correct errors and to be precise is a lot of work. Despite the work, students seem eager to participate. In fact, occasionally teachers or other school officials make concessions when some enthusiastic students strongly desire to contribute what does not at first seem related to the murals’ themes.
Davidson pointed to a giant goldfish mural by former student Michelle Boutier on a wall near a building’s entrance.
“She liked koi fish, and it really doesn’t fit the theme, but it does,” said Davidson. “We made it fit.”
On a wall that had begun with the theme of music, Casaus pointed out a portion near the floor of a mural.
“One student begged me, saying, ‘Mrs. Casaus, can I just please paint Nemo (from “Finding Nemo”) down there?’ I had a very hard time saying no to that student.
I told myself, ‘You know, that’s a part of theater and part of the arts; so it’ll just connect to the whole thing.’”
The art work is not limited to the hallways. Some of it is in the auditorium and in the gymnasium. The magnitude of the art there has sometimes been intimidating.
The enormity of the sidewinder painted on the gymnasium wall at first intimidated Alberto Enriquez, the student artist who painted some of it from a scaffold with initial assistance from Buchanan.
“He was nervous about it because he had to use a scaffold and with the straps, and he was up and in the air,” said Buchanan. “And he said, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I don’t know how to do the body (of the snake).’ So I kind of explained to him, ‘OK, this is what you will do. You and I — we’re going to do it together.’ But then I noticed that he was doing like really good. And so I said, ‘OK ... see you later! I have a class.’ That’s how it was created.”
In the auditorium’s foyer hangs an intricate paper mosaic portrait of Cesar Chavez, the collaboration of all three art teachers’ classes that took them two months to complete to represent SLHS in downtown Yuma at the Children’s Festival two years ago. Created of painted paper, cut to pinky fingernail-sized pieces, the 5-foot-by-12foot work’s mosaic pieces were glued to squares of mat board, which were then placed glued onto a panel board like Masonite, Casaus explained.
“They had to paint the value that was on the actual photograph,” said Casaus. “So if it was light green, they had to paint a piece of paper that was light green, and they had to cut it into little squares and … glue it together. Each student was responsible for gluing the mosaic fragments onto a 12-inchby-12-inch square of mat board.”
“It was still very challenging for them because it was tedious,” said Casaus. “The actual work was very time consuming. It had to be done correctly so we could formulate this gigantic Cesar Chavez at the end. We had to work together — my kids … with Mr. Buchanan’s; Mr. Buchanan’s … with Mrs. Davidson’s. I mean we had to communicate all the time to make sure the pieces (fit). Every student had to communicate with every other student about the surrounding area, but within classes, each class had to make sure it fit together like a puzzle. So that was a big challenge for the kids. It was quite an experience.”
Wherever their creative works are found on the campus, students’ art contributes to school pride and apparently provides a notable absence of graffiti.
“I think it contributes to (school pride) a lot,” said Jacqueline Vargas, a junior who has often spent two to three hours a week painting. Her Wizard of Oz mural decorates part of one hallway. “It really exposes people’s talent. And because here in San Luis, there’s not really a big art community, this really does give like a safe space to artists here in school to show their work and to show what they’re capable of.” She added that the paintings were very time consuming because “we had to do the details correctly and make sure that it was painted correctly.”
“Students take ownership of their school and their hallways,” added Casaus. “When someone new comes onto the campus, it’s very neat to see that here is a place they’re brought to because, you know, I think they are wowed with what they see.”
Casaus said that her past experience teaching art — in a Phoenix school in which graffiti artists were given the opportunity to make art on big panel boards — convinced her that students can channel their talent through the art that’s on the walls instead of to something socially unacceptable.
“That (Phoenix experience) took care of the graffiti problem over there,” Casaus said. “And then here we’ve just never — praise the Lord — had that problem. And I think it does contribute to the fact that, ‘Hey they’re going to let us do it liberally, and why do we need to damage something that’s beautiful?’”
Former principal Coleman, now a counselor at Cibola High School, credits the teachers.
“While the initiative may have begun while I was there,” she said, “the teachers have really been the driving force behind the art work.”