Featured Story

Bay's Mural Club --Avery Schriner

Throughout the 2024-2025 school year, Bay High School’s creative minds have had the chance to truly make their mark. With a project that will outlive their time here, countless students have contributed to a permanent art installation that reflects both the values of the school and the collaborative design of its students. This year, the Ohio Arts Council provided a one-year grant for a therapeutic arts program. Led by Ms. DiLisi, a familiar face to many from her previous years as an art teacher at Bay High School, the club that became of this wonderful opportunity sparked creativity, inclusivity, and cooperation. Equally as important, all of the development these students have obtained came from the design and construction of four murals representing the pillars of the school, as well as numerous therapeutic art activities open to all.

The murals this group has created are probably the most well-known amongst the students at Bay High. While at the beginning of the year the design process included just art students, the physical painting involved all students who were interested, attracting attention from across the school. Meeting most Tuesdays and Thursdays during lunches, QRP’s, and after school, those walking past the art hallway could see the true community the murals brought to each student helping. 

Each of the four murals themselves symbolize one of the four values of Bay High School: Punctuality, Accountability, Community, and Kindness. To plan the design and layout process, a small number of art students met with Ms. DiLisi and various faculty and administrators to develop ideas for a series of murals that would speak for the voices of the students. Using computer design platforms to lay out ideas, slowly, as a group, options were narrowed down until a consensus was reached. One major part of this arts program is making sure it is open to every student at Bay High. This meant including students with and without disabilities, as well as students with and without previous experience in art courses. With the kind and caring help from Ms. DiLisi, painting the backgrounds of the murals (blends of mostly blues and complementary strokes of reds and yellows) was a job every student could undertake. Then, it was time to sketch out the designs onto the Masonite boards, which were used instead of painting directly onto the walls so that the hard work put into the painting could be moved and preserved longer. While a projector displayed the computer-designed images onto the canvas, students roughly sketched out the necessary guidelines. Finally, students could start the painting process. With a short time window to achieve the completion of four entire murals, students needed to work efficiently, something Ms. DiLisi helps greatly with. By establishing a schedule of days she would be in the school to advise and creating flexible deadlines for each mural, the students were able to finish the murals by mid-April. 

Each mural’s central focus is greyscale, realistic hands, contrasting the blue backgrounds, and one of the four pillars. The hands represent the common humanity each student shares at Bay High and vary for each pillar to specifically illustrate that characteristic. Toward the end of the year, these beautiful pieces will be hung as murals throughout the school for all to see, a manifestation of hard work and collaboration from all types of students. 

In addition to her work with the murals, Ms. DiLisi also spent one of the lunch periods on most Tuesdays and Thursdays with various students with disabilities. Through the therapeutic arts program, Ms. DiLisi developed activities that would be inclusive, but also would allow each student to use their abilities to the fullest extent, whether they had art experience and skills or not. 

This project allowed for the immersion of art into the lives of each student at Bay High School, whether they participated in the lunch period art workshops, contributed to any of the murals, or simply enjoyed seeing these works as they passed the art hallway. Art truly is a beautiful thing that can bring people together and, paired with the work of Ms. DiLisi and the students of Bay High, it has created a lasting impact on the community.