Growing The Next Muralists

By all accounts, they had a blast last summer.  This summer, they're going to do it again.

Chelsea Richardson and Sami Sully, two students at Meadowdale High School, are slated to paint a mural this summer. They, and other Meadowdale students, will be painting Sue Coccia's "Flying Heron" under her direction.

"I'm delighted to work with them," Coccia said. 

Coccia expects to collaborate with the students in the mixing of the colors. "Flying Heron" will be painted on a wall along 4th Avenue, just behind Housewares.

Housewares is owned by merchant and civic leader Robert Boehlke.  "We're very excited to have this mural on the side of our building," he said.

The two high school students are not coming to the project completely green. They both worked on last summer's murals. 

As a founder of the Edmonds Mural Society, I remember in particular how electrified Society supporters grew after seeing a photo from last year's project. The photo showed a high school student working on Andy Eccleshall's "Steam Mills 1893."

The mural is located on Main Street just opposite the old post office. And the student? Sami.

"I did the mountains in the background," she said.  Speaking of muralist Eccleshall, she added, "He taught me a lot of techniques."

What excited everyone was that it was so wholly unexpected.  We all knew that the Mural Society would be giving established muralists a chance to practice their art. 

We never in our wildest imaginings thought that we would start growing the next generation of muralists. Yet, there they were.

Chelsea worked on all three painted murals over the summer.  "I worked on backgrounds and just the colors and then people painted the details over them," she said.

Both Chelsea and Sami study with fine arts teacher Amanda Wood. 

"It was a pretty cool experience to see them outside of my classroom, helping in their local community," Wood said. "And that's why I'm pushing them to get out there again."

Chelsea has a lot of fond memories of last summer, particularly in working on Cheryl Waale's "An Edmonds Kind of Eve," painted alongside A Very Taki Tiki Bar on Main Street.

"I had a bunch of friends working with me," she said, "and it was all laughing and talking with the artist."

Sami agrees.  "The person who owned the unit we were working on kept coming out and hugging me," she said.  "He was so happy."