MONROE — Art students from Argyle were presented with a unique opportunity at the start of this school year, and through teamwork, their skills will be available for the public to see for many, many years to come.
The students traveled with art teacher Laurie Pledl this week to Pleasant View Nursing Home, where they painted a mural along the south wall of the building that leads to the employee entrance.
“My husband (Greg) works here, and his boss was interested in putting a mural up on the wall,” Pledl said. “When she found out I was an art teacher with a painting class, it came together quickly.”
Pledl brought the challenge to her class of about 15 students. They worked in pairs on smaller canvas pieces, coming up with ideas for a design.
“I wanted to give the students as much ownership as possible,” Pledl said. “We wanted to make it a pleasant view for those here at Pleasant View.”
A challenge within the project was the wall has partitions spaced throughout.
“There wasn’t a lot of practice time for the students. It’s a big wall, and there were many factors that went into it,” Pledl said.
They had planned to paint it the final week of September, but rainy weather postponed the project. Then on Oct. 4, the group faced unusually strong winds that knocked over a ladder at one point.
Pledl said she and her husband primed the exterior wall about a week earlier. The students were using exterior house paint from Clark and Kensington, with acrylic paint for detailing.
“It should last a while,” Pledl said.
Freshman Brooke Wellnitz said the project was really fun and has been a positive learning experience.
“We worked on it in class for three weeks,” she said. “It’s pretty cool to paint something that everyone can see when they drive by.”
Freshman Taylor Svendsen said it was a great learning experience to partner up for the canvas mock ups, add everyone’s ideas together into one big mural, and then go out and create the actual art.
“I had never painted anything quite as big as this before,” Svendsen said.
