OHS student's art to hang in Underground Railroad Center

When the Under­ground Rail­road Cen­ter finally opens up in the Gash­older build­ing in a few years, the cen­ter will have some art­work to hang on its walls.

Dur­ing the half-time of the var­sity boys bas­ket­ball game at Ober­lin High School, art stu­dents pre­sented three murals they painted, each depict­ing dif­fer­ent parts of Oberlin’s role in the Under­ground Rail­road, to Ober­lin city man­ager Eric Noren­berg and assis­tant city man­ager Dar­lene Colaso.

“I think this is another great oppor­tu­nity for col­lab­o­ra­tion between young peo­ple through the high school and, poten­tially, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant projects the city will accom­plish in the early part of this cen­tury,” Noren­berg said.

The idea for the murals sprouted last year when Lorna Kretch­mar, then the art teacher at the high school, was look­ing for pub­lic spots around town to show­case art­work by stu­dents in the Inter­na­tional Bac­calau­re­ate pro­gram in order to meet require­ments for their IB diplo­mas. One of the places the works were dis­played was Ober­lin City Hall.

“So many peo­ple were just so pleased, rang­ing from city employ­ees to res­i­dents, to have the oppor­tu­nity to walk through that hall­way and see orig­i­nal art that I spoke to Lorna after­ward and passed on that praise,” Noren­berg said.

Kretch­mar agreed to arrange for more art­work to be dis­played from stu­dents at the high school and also dis­cussed with Noren­berg the idea of cre­at­ing the three murals related to the Under­ground Rail­road story.

Kretch­mar retired at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. Only one of the murals was com­pleted at the time, and Kretch­mar dis­cussed the project with her replace­ment at the high school, Danielle Camino.

“Lorna had told me in the begin­ning of the sum­mer that the project was in progress, and I’d have to pick up where she left off,” Camino said. “There were two large sized paint­ings that still need to be completed.”

Camino also said at the time, there was no image picked for the paint­ings. The stu­dents were asked to do their own research on the project and were allowed to pick their sub­ject matter.

Five stu­dents worked on the three murals. One of the paint­ings was com­pleted by Kasha Hilton and Stephanie Luczkowski before they grad­u­ated last year. Another was painted by Marissa Hart and Neva Rus­tad. The third was done by Rachel Mentzer.

Accord­ing to Camino, each of the paint­ings took around two months to com­plete, with the stu­dents work­ing on them dur­ing their free time.

Noren­berg said the murals will be on dis­play in a hall­way inside city hall while the ren­o­va­tions con­tinue at the Gash­older Build­ing. When the project is com­pleted, he hopes to see the paint­ings per­ma­nently dis­played inside the Under­ground Rail­road Center.

“Once the Under­ground Rail­road Cen­ter is com­plete, I hope those stu­dents come back and visit and look at the works they’ve com­pleted and are very proud of what will be a draw region­ally and nation­ally,” Noren­berg said.

Camino said the project has instilled the stu­dents with con­fi­dence in their work, and they rel­ished the idea of work­ing on such an impor­tant project.

“It builds their con­fi­dence up so much. When they real­ized that this was going to be some­thing that was per­ma­nently installed in this new build­ing which com­mem­o­rates such a huge thing, their eyes were wide open with excite­ment,” she said.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Under­ground Rail­road Cen­ter visit the city’s web­site at www.cityofoberlin.com.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Jan 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.