Last school year, the Class of 2024’s Art Major IVs spearheaded a fresh wave of murals on the hallway walls. However, with three murals left unfinished, artistic alumni will return to complete the murals.
“In general, the rule is you finish your mural or I paint over it,” said fine arts teacher Sharon Slattery. “But the reality is, I usually don’t paint over it until the following spring.”
Slattery stated that if a graduating senior’s mural is left unfinished at the end of the year, a medium of communication separate from their Newton Public Schools email is established to check if they are interested in returning to complete their mural.
According to Slattery, an artist in the current senior class is chosen to patch up murals, either for murals that aren’t finished or those that have been vandalized or damaged.
“They’re big paintings, so you have to be a good painter,” said Slattery. “If someone’s really strong, they can also imitate the style that’s already there so they’re not changing it. They’re just kind of cleaning it up in the way that it has already been done.”
Nika Grusby ‘24, the touch-up muralist for the Class of 2024, added that public art, such as murals, is held to a higher standard than personal art. “Because murals are permanent paintings in communal spaces, the focus is on the end result over the process.”
According to Slattery, although three of the 12 total murals were incomplete at the end of the year, “All three students have been in touch.” However, in past years, not all unfinished murals have had their original artists return to patch them up.
“Some students who have already graduated aren’t particularly keen on coming back to complete unfinished high school art,” said Grusby. “This is when touch-ups or removals are needed to keep up with the standards of public art.”
According to Grusby, Slattery checks with the original muralists to ask for their preferences before removing murals.
“I completely painted over a select few murals that had been left incomplete for several years, and that the artists were not interested in finishing,” added Grusby.
Diana Butler, a muralist for the Class of 2024 returning to North this year to complete a mural of Minecraft flowers, added that Slattery keeps graduating muralists’ materials if they would like to finish their murals.
“This paint is pre-mixed,” said Butler. “She saved all of them for me over the summer and luckily they didn’t dry up.”
Butler noted that the Newton Teachers’ Association (NTA) strike subtracted a significant amount of working time from students. The time constraint contributed to some graduating before finishing their murals, including Butler.
