Stagecoach mural leads students back in time

Local minister, volunteer and artist Grace Lueras works with Stagecoach Elementary fifth-grader Fernando Jim on a mural at the school Thursday. Lueras has helped students paint many murals in the school. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Fifth-graders Shammond Goodman, Patrick Ian Miller, and Jason Cheschilly-Leyba were all having fun in the atrium of Stagecoach Elementary School on Thursday afternoon.

Their teacher, Ms. Sayre, was nowhere in sight, but the boys weren’t skipping class and they weren’t goofing around. Actually, they were working very diligently on a dinosaur mural they were painting. Shammond, standing on metal scaffolding, was painting leaves on a tree while Patrick and Jason were painting rocks at the bottom of the mural. The boys were working — and enjoying some one-on-one time — with “Miss Grace,” a local woman who has been bringing art projects to Stagecoach Elementary for several years. Outside of the school, “Miss Grace” is Grace Lueras, a local artist, mural painter, and the pastor of Gallup’s Fellowship Church.

The dinosaur mural is part of Lueras’ latest creative project at Stagecoach. Students in Sayre’s fifth grade class are painting a scene from the Triassic Period — a period of time 248 to 206 million years ago — that features dinosaurs that once lived in New Mexico, like Coelophysis, the state’s official fossil.

Lueras said students in Sayre’s class were rewarded with participation in the mural project because their class demonstrated the most improved test scores. The students get to work on the mural on a regular, rotating schedule, and they learn art techniques like drawing, mixing paint, blocking in colors, dry brush painting, and glazing techniques.

The mural project is just one of several that Lueras is currently assisting with at the school. All the classes at Stagecoach are currently working on different dinosaur-themed projects, she explained, with most including both research and creative components. The projects will culminate in a special open house night on Tuesday, March 24, when all the classroom projects will be displayed down the school hallways and a “museum” will be set up in the atrium.

Lueras, whose first experience at Stagecoach Elementary was as a substitute teacher, said she began volunteering at the school by teaching a Friday afternoon drawing class. She had been fortunate enough to receive art training, she explained, and she wanted to share that training with local children. That weekly drawing class then led to the idea of creating a large mural with Stagecoach fifth-graders.

A friend explained the basics of mural painting with children, a small grant covered half the cost of the art materials, and Lueras donated her time. That first mural turned out to be a very large and ambitious underwater ocean scene that covers one entire segment of school hallway. Because one of her students had moved to Gallup from Hawaii, Lueras added, the students including a painting of Hawaii’s state fish, the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a.

That first mural group just graduated from high school last spring, Lueras said. Coincidentally, just a few minutes after Lueras showed a visitor the ocean mural, a parent stopped by to offer Lueras a compliment on the dinosaur mural. The parent turned out to be Douglas Hansen, a father of six who was picking up children from school.

Hansen explained that his oldest son, Colin, now 19 and currently serving on an LDS mission in Santiago, Chile, was a member of that first mural painting crew.

Hansen wasn’t the only one to stop by and offer compliments. “That’s starting to look good,” said second-grader Joel Rivera as he passed by the mural on his way to the library.

“It looks pretty,” agreed classmate Quinton Draper.

Soon a whole crowd of second-graders were swarming around the mural, hoping to get their name in the newspaper too. Of the crowd, Eric Lee, Daisy Mata, Saiah Martinez, and Deshawn Morris persisted long enough to get their names written in a reporter’s notebook.

Since supervising the first student mural in Stagecoach, Lueras said she has continued to return to the school each year to spend two or three months working with teachers and students on special projects. The school has “a bunch of teachers doing great work,” she said, and she enjoys working with children and seeing the excitement they experience when they try and learn new things.

Lueras said she knows most schools today are struggling with resources that are stretched very thin, so she is happy to invest her talents and her time in local school children. “Not everybody measures their success in money,” she said. “This is my community. This is where I live,” she added, explaining that she tries to invest her talent in the local community so it can continue to grow in others.