CABOT – Cabot School sophomores Molly Paire and Freya Van Deusen unveiled a mural featuring Vermont scenes they painted on a wall outside Harry’s Hardware on Main Street. Class members were on hand for the occasion in a light drizzle Friday afternoon and Kyla Kerrigan brought her class of kindergarteners to see the mural.
“Johanna Thibault, the owner of Harry’s Hardware in Cabot recognized the talented young artists we have in our community,” said Cabot School Art teacher Amy Richardson.
“She commissioned two high school students to paint a mural outside the hardware store, on the back patio.”
Molly and Freya said they sketched out the main parts of their mural, but just “went with it and did lots of freehand painting.”
Thibault recalled a long list of paint colors the girls asked for when they were ready to start painting.
photo by Paul Fixx
They started work in the spring, taking time off in the heat of the summer, then working more hours to have the mural finished before the end of September so it could be sealed before colder weather set in.
“The art program at Cabot School encourages students to give back to their community and to explore art outside the classroom by engaging in artistic opportunities within the community,” said Richardson.
The center of the mural shows a map of the state marked with prominent towns. Scenes of the four seasons feature to the left and below Lake Champlain, a flower-filled Spring meadow with kayaks headed into the Summer with a barn near a field of cows and a windmill.
To the right of the Connecticut River are the Barre granite quarries with a quarry train headed toward a snowy Winter ski area. Above that, Fall features a covered bridge and sugar house.
The two artists included lots of small details to capture the attention of viewers, including people in most of the scenes. Their goal was to make the people look right, said Molly. The ski area shows skiers and a snowboarder resting against the base of a tree.
Cows in the meadow are serenaded with music wafting from the saxophone of a Jazz player. Bees and birds hover in various scenes, boats dot the water of Lake Champlain and a witch appears in the appropriate season.
The girls said they’d worked on other murals, but none this big and none as a project on their own, outside of a school project. Molly said it was a big project that taught her “to stick with something to get through it.”
Freya agreed with her mother who said she learned a lot, including time management, working with paints and dealing with the elements. Molly said it got so hot during the summer that the board got too hot to touch. They were “lucky with weather at the end” when there was a time crunch and they worked as many as six or eight hours after school.
“In a small, rural community like Cabot the school and community are more like an extended family,” said Richardson.
While Molly and Freya said they did the work mostly for the fun of it, they earned community hours, some treats and said Thibault bought them pizza.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
