But nine years wasn’t exactly what Julia Stutzer, who was an eighth-grader at the time, had in mind when she proposed a 9-foot-by-12-foot mural for Homer Middle School.
With the underwater scene finally nearing completion, Stutzer, now 23, is excited that what started as a sketch will finally be displayed on the side of the building.
“Oh my gosh, that’s the first I’ve heard about it,” Stutzer said when told construction of the mural is in its final phases. “I never expected it would get on the wall.”
Nine years ago Stutzer and 13 classmates were enrolled in a cross-curricular course called “AWESOME,” or “Art While Enjoying Some of Our Majestic Environment,” taught during spring semester by Linda Rourke.
“I gave the general outline, and everybody worked to add details,” Stutzer said of her two-year plan to create a lasting piece of art for the school.
The first year the students traveled to Halibut Cove to work with artist Annette Bellamy to create clay pieces depicting Stutzer’s design. After the pieces were brought back to Homer, Rourke fired them in the Homer High School kiln, a process that required 24 firings, each one taking 24 hours.
Then, all the pieces were carefully packed in boxes, awaiting the mural’s completion during the second year of the project. However, lack of funding brought the cross-curriculum program to an end the following year, and the pieces of the mural remained stored in a backroom until parent Marilyn Parrett discovered them while volunteering in Rourke’s art class four years ago.
“They looked interesting to me, like a puzzle, and I asked (Rourke) what they were. She said, ‘You don’t really want to know. It’s one of those projects that the funding stops and you can’t finish,’” Parrett said.
Parrett’s enthusiastic offer to help renewed the project’s momentum. The boxes were unpacked, the pieces carefully examined and everything weighed with an eye toward the frames needed for installation.
In 2004, Rourke applied to the Homer Foundation for a grant to pay for construction of the frames. The $1,300 grant award was used to have Fritz Creek Welding do the work, which was finished in 2005.
“I’ve taken this out and put it away I don’t know how many times. There have been times I said I was just not going to (complete) it, but there are too many people involved. It started with 14 kids and has kept growing,” said Rourke of the project that currently involves more than 40 individuals.
On Saturday, a group of volunteers, including tile artist Joshua Nordstrom of Tierra Tile, gathered in Rourke’s classroom to grout the mural.
“I think it’s great that (Rourke) has been committed to this as long as she has,” Nordstrom said. “It’s kind of one of those love-hate relationships, like it gets to be for me on long projects.”
Parrett is excited to glimpse “light at the end of the tunnel.”
“It’s going to be fun to finish it and see it on the wall,” Parrett said.
Jan Peyton, Stutzer’s mother, who was involved in the project nine years ago, said, “(Rourke) has been the mainstay behind this. And now here we are. I’m going to be happy to see it go up on the wall.”
Once grouted, Kenai Peninsula Borough maintenance personnel will install it on one of the school’s outside walls this summer, according to Rourke.
“After all these years, it’s coming together piece by piece,” Rourke said, smiling. “It will be finished. It will be hung on the building.”
Stutzer, a full-time student at University of Alaska Anchorage, is looking forward to visiting Homer this summer and seeing the mural.
“It’ll be cool to see it up there,” she said.
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
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