Mural adds life, color to classroom

LAYTON — The back wall of Nancy Clark's Northridge High School classroom is no longer a dull shade of cream. Not after three senior students transformed it into their larger-than-life-size canvas and painted a giant science mural on the surface.

Now the wall, which sits in the back of room C127 at the school, 2430 N. Hillfield Road, is splashed with bright reds, oranges, blues and more.

"They did such an awesome job," said Reed Loveland, head of the school's art department.

Loveland was one of several visitors who took a look at the wall April 5 during a small after-school reception held in Clark's room.

"It is just incredible what it has done to the room," he said.

At the start of the school year, Northridge's new principal told faculty members that they were free to do what they wanted with their classrooms. Clark jumped at the opportunity. With a degree in art, she was eager to liven her room up with color.

She went to art teacher Wendy Dimick to see if any of her students could paint a mural in her classroom. Dimick found independent study students Rachel Neil, 18, Stephanie Arnell, 17, and Shanna Davis, 18, and asked them if they would like to tackle the project.

"It was a lot bigger than we thought," Davis said. "I think if we knew how big it was we may have hesitated."

But the students didn't hesitate. They started painting the first part of September and finished just a few weeks ago.

Clark gave the students a poster she bought more than 20 years ago, titled "Science and Technology Are Everywhere," to use as a blueprint for the mural.

From a rocket pictured at the left side of the wall near the letters F=ma — force equals mass times acceleration — to a large tropical flower at the right side of the wall, the mural blends the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, zoology, botany and geology into one.

"It shows how sciences are interconnected," Clark said.

The mural also includes a penguin, cheetah, kangaroo, squid, hummingbird, dragonfly and helicopter.

Dimick freehanded the poster's images in chalk onto the wall and the students filled in the markings with paint.

The students spent one and a half hours of class time every other day working on the mural. They had to be conscientious of Clark's science students who were often trying to listen to her lectures while they painted.