The Mural Club is a new separate club at City High where members work on public art projects with the intention to beautify the community. The group meets twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays after school.
Nora Cole ‘26, founder and president of Mural Club, came up with the idea and sketch for their current mural project. She then submitted her idea to Mr. Bacon for approval, and after he approved it, she started looking for people to help her.
The club is currently finishing up the process of repainting the mural in the main foyer, tucked into the staircase, which is redesigned every 10 years. The new mural will picture a red-tailed hawk that stretches in front of the sun and over our school’s bell tower.
“About a year ago, I was offered the opportunity by Michael [Close] to replace the old mural in the staircase. It took a month or so to start sketching and get a solid design for the mural. I was inspired by our school colors and our mascot since this mural is supposed to represent the school,” Nora Cole said.
The entire process has now taken around a year, and the painting around three months, which has added up to over 100 volunteer hours for the club members. The mural is nearly finished and is now being fitted for the final part before its completion, which is a wooden frame still to be added.
“One challenge that we ran into was scaling the mural to size. Obviously, when Nora sketched out the idea for the mural, she did not draw it to scale, so when painting it, everything is made bigger, leaving certain spaces empty that might have looked fine when they were too small to fit anything. But now that looks kind of weird, so we have done a little bit of editing from the sketch to the mural on the wall to hopefully make it better,” Tessa Clore ‘26, vice president of the club, said.
Finding the correct materials and the right people to execute the project was the first big hurdle that the club dealt with. After Cole found a vice president, the club was given a $400 budget, which went to high-quality interior paints and supplies for the artists.
“I was able to gather some friends from my AP art class and a few from my friend group to help out with the painting process. We decided to keep the club closed off to other collaborators because we discovered that you can really only have 4-5 people working at once,” Cole said.
The mural club will be opening up for more people to join in the next few weeks in preparation for their upcoming projects.
“One personal fear I had to overcome was a fear of heights as a large part of the painting was being perched up 6-7 feet from the ground on a very old wobbly ladder. We decided that a pair would work together, the person at the base would hold the ladder so the other person felt more secure so that they would feel free to paint, then the two would periodically shift so that neither of them had to be at the bottom not doing anything for too long,” said Cole.
The members of the club earn volunteer hours for the time that they spend working on the mural, so their project counts towards Silver Cord hours.
“Mural club is a very welcoming environment and has brought me closer to people I otherwise never would have met. I also enjoy feeling like I can leave a mark on this school; even if it’s not permanent, it’s still there. I also like the creativity because I signed up for a lot of academic classes this year. I didn’t really have any time to take any art classes, so this gives me the chance to still fit art into my schedule,” said Clore.
The mural club has agreed to participate in the downtown bench painting program at the end of the school year and is also planning on painting a nature-themed mural in the art hallway that supports native plants and animals, which will be painted during the winter of next year.
