Presque Isle Middle School artist hopes mural will inspire others to be active

    PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — When Libby Moreau returns to Presque Isle Middle School this fall as a seventh-grader, she and her classmates will see her winning artwork, which depicts many of the sports opportunities found at the school, hanging in the hallway.
Earlier in the school year, the PIMS Student Council sponsored an art contest with the winning entry to be “transformed” into a removable mural that will hang outside the cafeteria leading to the gymnasium. Of the seven entries, Moreau’s submission received the highest number of votes from the student body.
“I’ve always liked to draw, and I felt like since this was the first-ever wall mural, it would be kind of cool if I did it, and I had a good idea on what to do with the sports theme,” Moreau said. “I really love sports a lot. I play soccer, basketball, and I do skiing.”
With the Student Council’s predetermined theme, “Believe it! Dream it! Let it inspire!” Moreau’s entry featured a baseball, softball, basketball, soccer ball, megaphone, tennis ball and racquet, track shoes and skis, as well as the head of a wildcat inside a paw.
Because the mural is horizontal and Moreau’s entry was created vertically, the finished product had to be slightly reconfigured.
“When Libby’s artwork was chosen, we had to change the design some because some of the proportions weren’t right,” said art teacher Julie Nadeau. “We stood around her entry and talked about what she wanted to do, and with a little fine-tuning, we came up with the final design.
“She basically redrew it so that it would fit to the proportions of the board. Then we copied it onto overhead projector paper, and then we projected it onto the board after it was primed,” she said. “The Gifted and Talented art students helped Libby sketch it out, and once that was done, we started painting it.”
Moreau said the alterations were necessary.
“Originally I had all the sports equipment inside the paw,” she said, “but with the frame, it was hard to make it all fit, so we put the sports equipment on the outside. It’s more spaced out … just a little different than the original. We also added more sports equipment.”
The mural was painted on the backside of a whiteboard, roughly the size of a bulletin board.
“It had a masonite surface, so we had to sand it down because it was too smooth for the paint,” said Nadeau. “We sanded it down and primed it, and then began painting the mural.”
Between 12-15 students, including about six G-T students, worked on the project. Nadeau estimated that about 25 hours went into creating the finished product.
“The problem was we could only work on it a couple of study halls a week because I travel to another school to teach art,” she said, “so that kind of slowed us down. We started at the beginning of February and finished it in May.
“I think it came out great. Libby did a wonderful job, and she was really good about changing things that needed to be changed when something didn’t work out,” said Nadeau. “I’m really proud of her.”
Moreau said she’s looking forward to seeing the mural hanging in the building on the first day of school.
“It’s kind of special because I love sports, and it’s going to be in the lobby where people walk in for sports, so they’ll be able to see it,” she said. “I was really excited to find out that I had won. There were a lot of great entries, so I felt really special that people voted for mine.
“We have a lot of people who do sports here at PIMS and hopefully my mural will serve as motivation for others to try,” said Moreau. “The theme was ‘Believe it! Dream it! Let it inspire!’ and hopefully my artwork will inspire people to do sports and be active.”
The Student Council plans to hold a similar art contest next school year.