Much of LACES is represented by barren walls, but a few spaces display lively pieces of art. Some talented student artists have graced LACES with their talent. One is located by the teacher’s parking lot, painted by Lizbeth Fuentes Class of ‘24, and senior Izzy Alva [Editor’s
Note: Alva is part of the LACES Untied editorial staff ]. Another is by alumnae Rosemary Brantley, Mika Tappan and Minnie Vignone Class of ‘24, located by the bungalows.
The mural by Fuentes and Alva is a graffi ti style art created with acrylic and spray paint, as well as
chalk for the sketch. Fuentes wanted it to be something happy that teachers could see on their way into school: a welcoming mural of bears hugging, dedicated to the LACES staff .
However, the artists faced some challenges creating the mural.
“Using spray paint is a huge learning curve, and your arms get tired really fast. Mr. Kuffel and Mr. Jacobs were not huge fans of the idea
once they heard the word graffiti,”said Fuentes.
Fuentes employed her personal art style, based on combining a variety of her favorite art influences together to make one big picture.
“The mural is meant to be a fun thing, it’s more of a maximalist style,” said Fuentes.
The mural by Brantley, Tappan and Vignone is based on Eastern European folk art flowers. It was also painted to add a pop to the newly painted stark white walls in the bungalow area. The flowers represent an underlying theme of growth, important to LACES mindset.
“The mural is there to be enjoyed and not necessarily thought about,” said Rosemary Brantley. “It’s to make everyone’s experience at
school a little more enjoyable.” From start to end, this group ran into a couple problems as well. “Starting was the hardest part because we were so busy and so it seemed kind of daunting,” said Brantley. “Also, we were using paint that was really old. We finished it on the last day of school and came back next year and all of the blue paint had sort of faded and fallen off . So we had topaint over a lot of it.”
Brantley hopes her mural raises initiative for other students to create more murals around the school as well, just as she did.
