Moundsville Middle Students Lend Artistic Talents to Grand Vue Park
Derek Redd Trending
More than a dozen students in a Moundsville Middle School studio art class spent Monday throwing a few splashes of color around the Grand Vue Aquatics Center's women's locker room, giving patrons a new mural to enjoy.
The day's beautification project was the second that Moundsville Middle students have undertaken in the last two years, said MMS art teacher Tabetha Morgan. Last year's was painting a mural on a wooden fence beside a Grand Vue Park playground. This year's gave the students the chance to work on the big, blank canvas of one of the women's locker room's walls.
"I'm really big on art advocacy," Morgan said. "The arts grow students' self esteem, self efficacy and they're able to display their work within the community. It really helps them with their ability level."
Morgan said the murals are almost totally done by the students. Each student in the class submitted a design for Grand Vue to choose from. The park picked Karmen Mercer's design as the basis for the mural, and brought in elements from the designs of Alexis Roberts, Zoey Fry, and Jessie Nguyen to complete the look.
The final design was a day at the aquatic park, showing many of the facility's features - the twisting water slides, lily pads and lounging areas. A girl smacks a beach ball in the middle of the scene.
Mercer served as the project manager Monday, guiding the other students through the mural's creation.
"One of the things I really wanted to draw the most was the slides," she said. "I've never had this big of a canvas before, so I thought that was really fun. It's hard at the same time, but it's really fun."
The entire class enjoyed the exercise, laughing and smiling as they brought the mural to life. Morgan said the fun also was an opportunity to bolster the student's development.
"I believe that the arts grow leadership skills," Morgan said. "They grow the growth mindset skills of students. Art really does help with cognitive abilities, with improving mental and social skills altogether.
"I see this a lot in projects we do with students in the community," she continued, "because it gives them a platform to be able to say, 'This is what we can do. This is our ability.' And it shows the entire community what these students can do and what they're capable of."