SWR art students paint mural for Newtown
Less than six months after December’s deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., art students at Shoreham-Wading River High School are preparing to send a large mural there that they spent weeks creating.
The mural, which was unveiled at Tuesday evening’s Shoreham-Wading River school board meeting, was commissioned by high school principal Dan Holtzman and supervised by art teacher Shannon Lustig. It will be shipped to the Connecticut town at a future date.
“Mr. Holtzman wanted to do the mural so he came to me and asked if I was interested in participating,” Ms. Lustig said. “He wanted something uplifting and happy. I brought it to the students’ attention and we decided we wanted to do a landscape.”
The finished project features a woodland scene with a meadow and the words “Hope. Love. Dream.” Ms. Lustig’s students also painted 26 butterflies to represent the 20 children and 6 adults who were killed in the shooting.
Ms. Lustig, 33, said that the eight students who worked on the project donated “countless hours” to create the mural, which was started after winter recess and completed last week. She said the Home Depot in Coram donated about $150 in supplies for the project.
“This mural represents respect and admiration for the 26 people that were prematurely taken from this earth in Newtown on December 14, 2012,” Ms. Lustig said.
