Mural menagerie
The longer you look at the new Evergreen Elementary School mural, the more you see.
Peacocks in Carol Stream, for instance. And a giraffe.
Though not exactly standard local critters, such exotic animals are part of a zoo attached to a theoretical park taking over a wall in the school.
About 25 fourth-grade students, along with a parent volunteer and the school's retiring art teacher tackled the project designed to brighten up the entrance.
"I was going to hire someone to do it," Principal Jean Peterson said. "Art teacher Mary Elaine Durkac said she would love to do it."
And so the project began.
"Just shows (Durkac's) compassion for her subject matter," Peterson said. "And she's leaving something behind for us, as she's not going to be walking through the doors of Evergreen." Durkac retires at the end of this school year.
Since last fall, a group of about 25 students in the newly formed art club have met after school to work on the painted mural. Working for 45-minutes at a time, the students paint the larger scenes sketched out by Durkac and parent Pam Keller, a muralist.
"The kids are so excited about the fact they can come back and see what they worked on," Durkac said. "When they walk through the building they'll say 'I painted this or that,' "
The mural has an outdoor theme that includes a park and zoo, plus all sorts of related activities. Within the park there are soccer games, people selling ice cream and games of hopscotch. Over at the zoo, an elephant joins the other exotics.
Even as they paint, Durkac said, they're adding more features.
Student Shelley Parat knows exactly what she's responsible for: the ice cream man's hat and apron, a peacock and a humming bird.
She said she was surprised at some of the more unusual techniques they've learned to apply paint.
Sometimes just brushing on the color doesn't really work, so they have to dab the brush on the wall to make the paint cover up the background.
Unless they're aiming for disappearing elephants, that's an important feature.