‘We can express how we feel’: Bluffton students at last paint mural delayed by COVID-19
Camila Rodriguez, 11, looked up at the birds that she and her classmates had just painted along a pavilion wall early Saturday at Bluffton’s Oscar Frazier Park.
One of the building’s sides now featured an eclectic mix of colors, with a new mural courtesy of about 10 fourth- and fifth-grade students enrolled at M.C. Riley Elementary School.
The group spent the hot, muggy morning sprucing up the wall with their art teacher, JoEllen Jacobs, as part of the Bluffton “Field of Dreams” project, a years-long effort to upgrade the park.
For Camila, a fifth-grader who wants to be a singer or actor some day, it had taken months to reach this point.
Jacobs, in spring 2020, had gathered her art club together to discuss the mural after the Rotary Club of Bluffton approached the school with the idea.
What were they going to paint?
The kids researched street artist Kelsey Montague, who’s famous for her wings art piece in Nashville. They liked Montague’s work, Jacobs said, and wanted to paint birds for their own mural.
But the project stalled when COVID-19 struck South Carolina in March 2020 and the state’s schools moved to remote learning.
Jacobs had to wait over a year before gathering the restless students for this weekend’s paint job.
“Every week they were like ‘Is it this Saturday? Is it this Saturday?’” Jacobs said. “It’s nice to see it come together.”
It’s been a hard year for the kids, she added, switching from virtual instruction back to in-person classes. It was good for them to get outdoors Saturday, she said, as the pandemic continues to recede.
Giuliana Velez, a fourth-grader who painted five of the mural’s birds (at least as of noon), agreed. Saturday was a blast, she said. One of her birds featured a series of interlocking purple, blue, yellow and orange triangles. Another one had a big doughnut on it (asked to explain this, Giuliana simply said she likes doughnuts, pointing to her matching doughnut shirt).
Camila, meanwhile, added that it was nice to just see all of their creativity on display.
And get their hands messy with paint.
“We can express how we feel,” she said.
Where to find the mural
Head to Bluffton’s Oscar Frazier Park. The mural is on a pavilion adjacent to the park’s playground and is visible from the street.
This story was originally published June 5, 2021 at 2:40 PM.
