1000 Hours Go Into Novi High Mural

NOVI, MI – From the desk of Novi High School: More than a dozen students committed approximately 1,000 combined hours to create a lasting legacy at Novi High School. Using a beige wall as their canvas, Jennifer Harvey’s art students produced an amazing work of art that will be visually enjoyed for years to come by future students, teachers and staff. The Jurassic-inspired acrylic painting is located near Megan Chapin-Dube's classroom, and features several creatures, highlighted by a bright blue sky and an orange raptor.

“It’s going to be a source of inspiration for many, many years to come,” principal Nicole Carter said. “It’s just another prime example of how remarkable this high school is and how amazingly talented our students are. The mere fact that they would be willing to dedicate their time outside of the regular school day to leave their mark on Novi High School is heartwarming.”

The mural is Harvey’s final visual contribution to the school as she is retiring at the end of the month. Under her tutelage, each of the past five graduating classes has painted a hallway mural. Harvey says she’s astonished at the growth in each project’s scope and complexity.

“Usually I’m a hands-off teacher. I teach them what they need to know,” Harvey said. “You can’t structure creativity. You can offer it up for technique, and you can offer ideas, you can help with time management. But when you let them create this is what happens, and it gets better and better. They have a passion for what they do. You can see it. You can see the detail that they put in it.”

Led by extremely talented artists Hannah ‘Oliver’ Davis and Miranda Rhea, the team managed to overcome obstacles, as well as a hectic spring, in order to meet their early June deadline. Even after graduating last Saturday, four seniors were back at school two days later to add a few more brush strokes to the mural, and to remove protective plastic from the floor, ceiling, and adjacent brick wall.

“The team environment is so interesting, sometimes difficult, but I would say ultimately very rewarding,” said Davis, who will attend Detroit’s College for Creative Studies in the fall.

The theme of the project, which took two months to complete, was a group decision.“A couple people suggested doing dinosaurs for the earth science program since this is the last year it will be offered to incoming freshmen,” Davis said. “I thought on the idea of dinosaurs and started brainstorming on different types of them. We were estimating doing 40 different raptor sketches and at least 10 different finished designs. I worked through a lot of the design phase on my own and then Miranda came in and helped a lot, especially with the color stuff.”

Seniors Emma Hammelef, Hannah Pickett and Kayla Savage all worked tirelessly on the project, which also received part-time contributions from Gabrielle Mack-Blamy, Jihye Choi, Rebecca Kemski, Shrinali Patel, Valarie Gray, Lisa Schechinger, Morgan Dickerson, and junior Min Hyeok Seo.

All but one of the students who worked on this year’s project plans to enter some artistic field as a career choice.

“Other than Emma, everybody here is going into art,” Harvey said. “Art is important and this is how they are going to ply their trade in the future, through creativity and hard work.”

Hammelef, who is headed to Case Western Reserve University to study bio-medical engineering, said the team dynamic was a big gain for many of the project members.

“It’s was definitely the teamwork,” she said. “A lot of people had me stepping in and doing work off of what they were doing, so as much as I would like to apply my own style I had to take into account their perspective on it, and how they did versus how I would do it. So definitely, I would say that teamwork has been the biggest takeaway.”

Those who see the painting will be challenged to locate some of the artists’ hidden characters, including a piece of Cheerios cereal embedded in the mural.

“Everybody was putting their little pieces in, like the turtle, the rat, the rabbit,” Harvey said. “This is a jungle and we don’t know everything that was back there, so I do kind of a ‘Where’s Waldo’ where people can become intrigued and start looking for other small things.”

During her freshman year, Hammelef said she never envisioned being part of Harvey’s mural team. Now she’s glad to have been a part of creating something so special.

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” she said. “I never really saw myself getting into art that much. … But as it turned out I was pretty good at it.”

Image via Bill Roose/NCSD