JM Identity Mural brings community together to paint

Apr. 13—ROCHESTER — Students and alumni of John Marshall High School gathered with members of the community to paint the base layer of the

JM Identity Mural

outside of the main entry way on Saturday, April 13, 2024.

The JM Identity Mural has been in the works for months. The commissioned artist, Greta McLain of GoodSpace Murals in Minneapolis, flew back to Minnesota this week from her home in Mexico to help with the base painting of the panels.

McLain had worked with Matthew Ruzek, the principal of John Marshall High School, when she helped with the Riverside Identity Mural and was quick to accept this project. She loved working with Ruzek and wanted to make something great at John Marshall, too.

After many discussions with community members and the school, McLain finalized a design and the beginning stages are being completed. McLain talked to nearly 500 people when she came to Rochester in January. It was important to make a design that the artists and the community were satisfied with.

"It really represents the high school experience," said Erin Vasquez, coordinator for the John Marshall Community School program. "For parents, they really want to see things about how his high school is preparing their child for the future beyond high school. Alumni wanted to see some historic elements, something that really shows it's placed in Rochester. So we talked a lot, like hundreds and hundreds of pieces of data and then the artists were trying to design and we went back and forth a few times like 'hey, can you add this we don't love this color, until we had the final design.'"

After the base coat of paint is put on the panels, McLain and her team will go back and finish the rest before coming back to install it in the Fall of 2024. There were around 70 panels that needed to complete the mural. Once completed, the panels will be glued to the exterior of the building in three different locations, the walls of the performance wing, near the lunch window, the student patio area and above the main entrance.

"We use a unique technique that a lot of people aren't familiar with, which is called the polytab mural technique," said McLain. "It means that the whole mural is actually created off the wall on these different panels of synthetic campus and then glued on like permanent wallpaper. This mural technique allows everyone to work on it, but it also will last longer than if it was painted directly on the wall. So all of there's more work put into a polytab mural, but in the end, the installation on site is a lot faster."

Around 800 students helped to paint throughout the week, leaving 20 panels for their community day on Saturday. There were a variety of students, alumni and members of the community that came to participate in a giant paint-by-numbers experience.

"This is kind of the sweet spot of how do you make a community job something that we can ask the community to do that really helps the project but isn't like something that I want to micromanage," said McLain. "So we have them do the full base coat which we need to do, but if they mess up, like a student came in and they were like, 'I did 13 and it was supposed to be 17.' I'm like, 'it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be the base, no problem. It just means there's gonna be a little variety of what shines through when we put the overpainting on it.' And so it's that perfect mix of 'we need you, but you can't mess it up.'"

The mural features actual students who attend John Marshall High School and strive to display the identities present within their high school.

"There are students working on the mosaic stars that will go on the mural," said Vasquez. "So there's 27 mosaic stars and the stars are being done in country patterns and colors that represent the students of JM. There's two main things students said loud and clear, they're super proud of the diversity of JM and they are very passionate about the activities that they're involved in."