Mural celebrates human rights
Sandpoint Charter School Principal Alan Miller, art teacher Holly Walker, artist Lynn Guier and Arts Alliance executive director Lizzy Hughes join the student artists in front of the human rights mural on Thursday. (Photo by CAMERON RASMUSSON)
SANDPOINT — The combined efforts of the Sandpoint Charter School’s art students have yielded some big results — really big.
Their recently-completed human rights mural 8-feet by 8-feet in size towers above the visitors to the charter school’s high school campus from its suspended placement.
“The project’s theme serves as a universal declaration of human rights,” Sandpoint Charter School art teacher Holly Walker said. “We’ve been working on it since October, so it’s great to see it finished and ready to be displayed.”
The combined efforts of 24 students, Walker and the Arts Alliance resulted in the 25 panel mural. Arranged as a five-by-five grid, each panel depicts a different representation of a human right. Arts Alliance executive director Lizzy Hughes and professional artist Lynn Guier arrived at the school Thursday afternoon to install the artwork. After arranging lengths of barbed wire around the mural, school workers mounted colorful hands forming the shape of a heart atop the artwork’s surface.
Walker kicked the project off by challenging her students to pick and research a topic within human rights such as the right to shelter or free speech before drawing and painting artwork to represent their selection. Throughout the creation period, Guier served as artist in residence at the school, assisting students with their individual projects and the heart-shaped hands framing piece.
“It was hard for them to get excited in the beginning with the depressing subject matter,” Walker said. “But once they started getting into it and formulating ideas it really took off.”
The public is invited to attend a formal unveiling and reception for the mural at the Sandpoint Charter High School on Jan. 24 at 5:30 p.m.
The human rights mural isn’t the only school project on the Arts Alliance’s plate. The group also has been working on a mosaic mural with the Washington Elementary fourth- and fifth-graders themed after local water protection.
“We hope to have two public arts pieces ready for the summer,” Hughes said.