Murals & Art: November 2008

This mural was painted by Natalie over 10 years ago just as she was retiring from her career as an English teacher with the North Hunterdon High School Regional School District, located at Rt. 31, Annandale, New Jersey.

The mural contains many of the images from the famous stories and fables we read and have all grown up with. The mural time table right to left, starting with the sun, and the Garden of Eden, Hamlet, Moby Dick, and the list goes on with nearly 30 stories. Can you guess which ones you remember?

During lunch breaks, after class, for nearly a year Natalie Whiting painted this mural that spans nearly 255 feet in length. Due to an illness her work slowed, but with the help of some students pitching in it was completed. Natalie dedicated this painting to those that inspired her, husband, students, and of course the mural says it all.

When researching this mural we were able to locate Natalie. She was impressed that no one ever painted over it, she never really considered in a piece of art. I was impressed by her undertaking and skill, And how appropriate that the mural covers the wall where students post their poetry.

To visit this mural, you will need permission by the school, and a school security escort, so please don’t just show up, shhhhhhhhhhh, children are learning.

Research and Photographs by: John J. Kuczynski

ARTIST COMMENTS:

The North Hunterdon High School English Department has most of its classrooms on the lower level of the school. It’s built into the hillside, which means the hallway was one long corridor of cement on one side, classrooms on the other. Students and faculty have long referred to it as “the Dungeon”. The wall is about 255’ long and perhaps 10’ high. I’m not sure anymore.

The thought behind the project was to make the dungeon wall a tapestry of the common readings of the four age groups, freshman to senior year, but over the years those readings may have changed.

I wanted it to look as if the wall were wiped away and the images were revealed beneath.

The tapestry starts at the east end of the hall and reads right to left, not for any intellectual reason, but when I started there were no classes at that end of the hall.

I wish I could give you the names of all the students who helped, but I’m afraid too much time has passed. Two Honor Society girls prepped he entire hallway. Students who had after school detention with me had to sit and watch or help me out. Some students truly added their own touches, but I have only one name---Michael Panella. He did the sunburst at the very start. Some of the members of the Thespian Troupe also worked on it between rehearsals. I’m hoping if your blog site goes up, credit can be attributed to those individuals. Cathy Benson of the Science Department helped with the horses.

I worked on it during my free periods, lunch, before and after school, and in the summer. The Board of Education paid for the paints and some brushes (under $500 I think), but I did most of the work. It went really fast at the beginning, but when my schedule changed, things slowed down. We had four minutes passing time, and my free periods were in 20-minute clips, which was too short a time to get out all the materials and clean up before the classes, moved. It was half done the first year, but took two more years to finish in 2002.

The ideas are a combination of textbook illustrations, textbook cover art, and my own head. Several of the characters are modeled after faculty members or students. (The red-haired angel staying Abraham’s knife is after my husband.)

I don’t know if the following is every book, but this is what I remember having not seen it in five years:

Genesis (Creation, Abraham and Isaac, Noah’s Ark, Moses at the burning bush, with tablets and the Golden Calf), Greek mythology (Hera and Zeus), the Iliad (the sack of Troy, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, Circe, and Scylla, the Sea Monster, Penelope at her loom), the assassination of Julius Caesar, Beowulf fighting Grendel, Excalibur, Merlin, dueling knights, The Lady, Mac Beth’s witches, apparitions, and Lady Mac Beth, Chanticleer and the Fox, the Canterbury Pilgrims (only the firs eleven are identifiable), King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Desdemona, Milton’s Paradise Lost (Angels casting the devils into the abyss), Pope’s Rape of the Lock, Gulliver in Brobdingnag, and Lilliput (with a few hymnyms thrown in), Blake’s Tiger burning bright in the forest of the night, and his chimney sweep, Coleridge’s albatross and ghost ship from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Keats’s Grecian urn, assorted scenes from Dickens’ Great Expectations ( Magwitch, Estella, Miss Havisham, Pip, Walworth, Jaggers), Melville’s Queequeg about to harpoon Moby Dick, Poe’s raven upon the bust of Pallas, Hawthorn’s Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynn and Pearl, Roger Chillingworth, and Rev. Dimmesdale, Carroll’s white Rabbit, followed by the Mad Hatter’s tea party, Alice with the Caterpillar in the Garden, Huck Finn hunting and rafting with Jim, the Snows of Kilamanjaro, Ethan Fromm…..and I can’t remember the rest in order, but I know it includes The Great Gatsby, Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, and A Raisin in the Sun.

I remember the end has cuneiform, the Rosetta Stone, and hieroglyphics before it melds into the library shelving. (That was to show the connection between writing and reading.)

I don’t remember signing it, but I know the administration liked it. They wanted me to do a kind of Sistine Cafeteria! It did cut down if not eliminate graffiti, and I hope it encouraged other areas to get students to use art to enhance their space.