Students at Hillview Middle School test their creativity each year by transforming the Menlo Park school’s blank, beige exterior walls into an amazing display of vibrant, whimsical murals.
This year’s “Dragon Mural” is probably “the splashiest, longest and most visible of all,” says art teacher Terry McMahon, who launched the mural project 15 years ago.
Students and visitors smile when they see Asian dragons — without wings — use an umbrella to fly across the library wall. Western dragons on the wall move freely because they have wings. “Evil dragons” and “good luck” ones are among the 32 brightly painted dragons, plus one egg, created by the 36 students in Ms. McMahon’s mural elective classes.
The dragon mural is Ms. McMahon’s last one at Hillview. After 22 years in the Menlo Park district, she retired last month with accolades from trustees as “Artiste Extraordinaire and a genuine Community Treasure.” During two decades, she touched the lives of thousands of students.
The new art teacher, Janet Strauss, who has been a docent with the Hillview murals, plans to continue the project next year, says Ms. McMahon.
However, the murals may be short-lived. Plans call for demolishing the current Hillview buildings (except the multi-use room) upon completion of a new Hillview school on the site of the present playing field along Santa Cruz Avenue. It’s part of the district’s $91.1-million bond project to expand facilities at all four schools to accommodate a projected upswing in enrollment.
How it began
Ms. McMahon recalls that Principal Mike Moore planted the idea of creating murals many years ago when he said, “We ought to do something with all those blank, beige walls.” That was long before the first modernization of the weary, late 1940s Hillvew campus.He suggested she contact artist Greg Brown, who was commissioned by the city of Palo Alto and created whimsical murals of characters who pop up unexpectedly on downtown buildings. For example, people look twice at his “Bank Robber’s Mishap,” painted on the outside wall of Washington Mutual Bank at 300 Hamilton Ave..
Mr. Brown came to Hillview and talked with art students about how he approached creating the life-size people murals. He showed slides of his projects and even gave tips on such details as painting hair so it looks like hair and making shadows.
Hillview’s first murals in 1992 were in Mr. Brown’s style. Students painted themselves in funny, whimsical situations. A bounding kangaroo pulls a boy on Rollerblades. A girl opens a book and out pops a wizard, dinosaur, and space rocket that could jump right out of the pages of sci-fi and fantasy books on the library shelves.
After awhile, says Ms. McMahon, “we decided to get out of the Greg Brown style and choose themes for larger murals.” Enter the “Underwater Sea Mural,” opposite the library, that extends from the wall up and under the building’s overhang as if a person is underwater, surrounded by sharks, whirling sea anemones, swimming sea turtles, and sea divers.
Other murals in this venue include the brilliant-hued “Rainforest,” with pink-feathered flamingos, toucans, giant frogs and stands of bamboo; and “The Flower Garden,” with giant flowers and ants that wraps around the school courtyard and near a real garden.
More murals tie into the curriculum. The detailed Renaissance playing cards along hallways reflect the seventh-graders’ study unit devoted to that period of history. The stylized mummies or sarcophagi represent the sixth-grade class on Egypt.
One of the most visible murals, along Santa Cruz Avenue, captures digitalized photos of the students in a palette of five colors. Students created their own portraits and painted the school’s name in a mirror image.
This 2004 mural, says Ms. McMahon, represents the “spirit of this age with its youthful and vibrant faces.”
Also in 2004, young Hillview artists had the unusual opportunity of being invited to design a mural for a 60-foot-long curving wall in the China National Children’s Center park in Beijing. At home, they created a lively, colorful design of fanciful animals before they packed their paints and bags for China, where they painted the mural along with Chinese counterparts.
The China trip inspired the theme for the 2005 Hillview mural. Large elephants, multi-striped zebras, and more animals bound along the curving wall of the pavilion and the wall of the art room.
Without the continuing support of Sue Scheid and Wendy Ellis, former Hillview parents, who signed on as docents when their children were at the school, the mural project could not have lasted this long, says Ms. McMahon.
She also gives credit for the project’s longevity to “Mike Moore, who has allowed us to have the artistic freedom to do pretty much what we wanted.”
The steps
Picking out the wall is the first step in the mural-making process. Usually the wall is 12 feet tall, and it must be in the shade. Then, says Ms. McMahon, “we brainstorm as a class to see what subject matter would work.” Since this will be public art, “the subject can’t offend anyone,” she says.Next, each student in the two mural classes (about 15 students per class) creates a drawing, such as a dragon, to the desired size. A palette of colors is selected, which involves mixing colors.
Then, all the drawings are arranged on paper as a mockup of the entire mural. Using an overhead projector, the drawings are enlarged and transferred to large pieces of butcher paper, cut out, blackened with charcoal, and arranged on the wall, according to the mock-up. Using black felt-tipped pens, the students trace the drawings on the wall before they begin painting.
It’s a lot of physical work because most murals require ladders, paint trays, and water that must be brought to the site for each session. The classes meet for only 45 minutes every other day.
Other students say they love to watch as the mural takes shape. They take pride in the murals. Community people and out-of-towners also check out Hillview and its amazing display of student art.
“The murals have never been graffitied,” says Ms. McMahon, probably because students respect the work of young students and the school.
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