School gets grant for mural of mascot

MANATEE — Step inside the vestibule of Mills Elementary, look up and you’ll see a 10-foot by 12-foot painting of the school’s mascot, a mountain lion.

But next door, inside the recently built Buffalo Creek Middle School on 69th Street East, artwork of its hawk mascot is nowhere in sight.

But that will soon change thanks to a recently awarded $5,000 art grant.

The money will be used to buy canvas tiles for students at both schools to create a mosaic image representing a hawk, said Claudine Ruppal, the Buffalo Creek art teacher, who applied for the grant through the Leslie and Margaret Weller Arts Education Program of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County Inc.

Using watercolors, acrylics, pastels and chalk, Buffalo Creek students will learn how to use each medium and decorate canvas tiles in art classes.

They’ll then walk next door to Mills Elementary and teach their new-found skills to students they’ve been paired with.

When the project is complete next fall, a final assembly of the canvases will be put together by middle school students and art instructors, and one large mural will be placed in the main office at Buffalo Creek.

“My big thing is that this joint effort not only teaches middle school-aged children to be mentors, but it also serves the community,” Ruppal said Monday.

Whitley Canezo, a sixth-grade student at Buffalo Creek, said she’s excited to take part in the collaboration.

“I like art, you can express yourselves so much with it,” said Whitley, age 11. “Plus when somebody walks in our school they wanna be able to see we are proud of it.”

Especially, she said, those Mills students who will move into the middle school in its third year of operation.

“The fifth graders from there most likely are coming to this school so we want to give them a little taste of our school spirit. We don’t want them to think we’re a boring school,” Whitley said.

Principal Matt Gruhl said he couldn’t agree more.

“It’s important to have a symbol of pride in your school, something that reminds people that there is something that joins us all together,” said Gruhl.

About 900 Buffalo Creek students will team up with close to 1,000 Mills students to make the mascot mural.

Between both schools, the money provides enough to create 2,000 individual canvases. So when they’re done piecing the hawk together, whatever is left over will be used to make another mascot artwork at Mills.

When it comes to art, the upcoming mural making won’t be the first time both schools have joined forces.

Last fall the Manatee Education Foundation awarded Buffalo Creek a $250 Cash for Class Grant, which paid for clay and glaze for students at both schools to create pottery that was sold during Mainly Art, a monthly art festival held on Main Street in downtown Bradenton.

Proceeds helped purchase more art supplies for students, Ruppal said.