Back row l-r: Angie Stokes, Jacob Graham, Olivia Klinker, Aubree Sproles, Brooke McMullen, Kyle Bickford Front row l-r: Hannah Wilhelm, Catherine Strable, Brooke Greulach, Greg Lammers
Catherine Strable – “HONK!”
Last fall the Art Club students of Wayne Trace High School began making plans for a project and this summer they got together with their instructor, Angie Stokes, to create a mural. But where? At this same time the library in Payne had the side of the building facing West Merrin Street that was recently painted. A relationship was soon cultivated between the library and the school club and this grew into a full blown art project. The young artists sought imagery relating to the area. Soon they had many ideas from the History of Paulding County books to recently retired bus drivers conjuring memories of school. Nothing would be complete in Paulding County without images of farming. All these stories came together to visualize the giant mural. Angie Stokes helped the Art Club students gain a $1000 grant from the Paulding County Area Foundation for purchasing materials. Students spent over 170 hours painting the 86 foot-long mural starting in May. Students worked weekdays and weekends on the project. Even after graduating, Kyle helped and continued working on this project.
Three teens even volunteered at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings in the summer!?! Angie stated, “A total of 14 kids participated in the painting of the mural, and all g
rades 7-12 were represented.” Susan Pieper, Director of Paulding County Carnegie Library, was very impressed with the effort and work that went into creating this work of art. Olivia Klinker spent the most time on the project; she clocked over thirty hours alone! “We had 18 gallons of paint and used a number of books from the Payne Library as reference in planning, drawing, and painting the mural.” stated Stokes. “It will be fun to see if people can match the pictures on the mural with photos from the Paulding County history books in the library.” Children’s books were used for the model of the kid sitting under the tree in the last scene. The last panel of the painting was dedicated to Sally Davis who was the founder of the Payne Branch Friends of the Library, the group that helped to make this mural possible. Angie said, “I could definitely see taking on an annual community project like this as part of our Art Club activities.” It’s a great experience for the kids to learn what goes into a project of this scalefrom the early stages of brainstorming and planning to adapting and making changes along the way as we saw how space and light worked with our ideas on the wall. It has also been a wonderful opportunity for the students to get involved and give something back to the community that supports them in their creative endeavors! Great job to the Wayne Trace Art Club!
