By Maire Crooks, The Current Co-Editor-in-Chief
Last year, River Hill’s chapter of the National Art Honor Society (NAHS) painted a stunning mural on the media center desk, displaying a multitude of images, including books, planets, a train and even a dinosaur. This school year, the group aims to do the same, beginning with a mural in the world language hallway.
The mural is to be located downstairs outside rooms 137-140. The NAHS officer team is still in the planning stages, but sketching on the wall is anticipated to begin this month.
In a recent meeting, ChaeWon Cheon, the current NAHS treasurer, described, “We had members of NAHS break up into groups, brainstorm ideas, and then come up with sketches… there are certain requirements for the murals. It has to be world language-related and people can have different ideas about that.”
The designs from each group will be combined into one final plan. NAHS member Emma Potter enjoyed the sketching process. As an honor society, she says, “We are trying to make it very colorful and diverse with all the languages River Hill has to offer.”
ChaeWon explained that there are a lot of logistics that have to be taken into account, although the design is more “open for interpretation.”
The biggest hurdle of said logistics is the materials. For the media center mural last year, the group “used up a lot of the materials like the paint and the primer,” said ChaeWon. “Mainly it was a lot of communication with our sponsors, the art teachers, because… we can’t buy [materials], the art teachers have to buy them.”
Despite the difficulty of planning such a large feat, the officers ultimately wanted to continue the mural tradition, because they believe that the members responded positively to the idea when implemented last school year. ChaeWon articulated, “it was a lot of fun and I think a lot of people really enjoyed it.”
The members could share their passion for art and design, while also earning valuable service hours to fulfill the honor society’s requirements. Emma remarked, “You need 7 hours to qualify for the year. This goes towards your hours. Every little piece is thirty minutes, so the sketching was thirty, the sketching was thirty, and I am sure the painting will be more because it will take longer.”
Overall, the River Hill community looks forward to this new burst of color in the halls and cannot wait to see NAHS’s ideas come to life.