Senior Wall Leaves a Mark on Fair Grove

Students in Stephanie Brown’s Advanced Art class are carrying on the Senior wall tradition. Every year, in the back high school hallway, a painting is created that incorporates the senior class’s signatures.

This has been a meaningful tradition at Fair Grove for around 12 years. Mrs. Brown explained, “I started at Fair Grove 10 years ago and there were two senior walls already in my room. The teacher before me started them. I just continued with the tradition because my students asked me to.” 

Soon enough, though, Mrs. Brown decided the hallway outside of her room would be a better spot for the paintings. “There were 6 in my room before we painted over them. It just became too much, it felt like the walls were closing in. So, I took really good photographs of them and plan to have them printed on canvas to hang up in my room, so that they can live on even though they’re no longer there. The hall allows for the tradition to continue.”

Having your signature on the painting is a quite literal way of “leaving your mark” on the school and Brown said that it can be quite meaningful for them. “Even though kids rarely come back to look at their signatures, there’s something about leaving your mark on the school. They like the idea of future students possibly pointing them out or their younger siblings coming along and finding their name.”

Torii Dugan (12) is helping to paint the wall this year and she said, “I’m loving this project because while I have helped on the senior walls before I did not create them and it’s going to be amazing to create something for everyone collectively to remember and to leave behind for others.”

Torii and Stephenie Dugan are the two advanced art students mainly involved in this project. It needs a lot of planning and preparation, and Torii described some of this process. She explained, “We all talked through the ideas and Stephenie Dugan and I both created wall sketches. We plan to combine what we like on both sketches into the final wall sketch.”

After creating a sketch on paper, they will transfer it onto the wall and then begin painting. Each year, a different theme is usually incorporated throughout the wall, and this year’s theme is retro video games. “Old games like Space Invaders, Mario, and Street Fighter will be on the wall,” Torii Dugan said.

After these elements are painted, the signatures will be added, which advanced art kids will also be in charge of. Brown explained how signatures have been done in different years. She explained, “In precovid years it was the entire senior class’s responsibility to paint their own signatures on the wall. Nowadays, there are too many kids gathered up at the wall at one time, so advanced art kids are in charge of all of the signatures. They get assigned a group of seniors and then get with those kids to see if they want something painted with their name or if they just want their name painted in like a cool font.”

Advanced art students will begin painting very soon in order to get all the senior’s signatures before graduation.