Altercare, a senior living facility in Wadsworth, asked Wadsworth High School’s Art Club if they would create a mural for their dementia residents during the summer of 2024. Altercare provided the students with art supplies along with what they wanted the mural to be about.
“They reached out to us last year about doing a mural here, in their dementia ward and they wanted to tie in the theme of birds, cause this is a quiet room that the residents can come in here, and they can bird watch and sit in peace,” Dave Derrig said, one of the supervisors of Art Club and an art teacher at Wadsworth High School.
The mural portrays trees, flowers, grass and birds. Altercare had the idea of writing down the residents who have passed away on the birds, making sure they will not be forgotten.
Derrig originally wanted to start out with 40 or 50 birds for the mural, the birds they were thinking about adding are common, Ohio-native birds, such as cardinals and blue jays.
“When we’re done with that, the next step is adding a whole bunch of birds to the branches and I know talking to the director here one of their ideas was like after one of the residents passed away they were going to write their names in the birds,” Derrig said. “So I think that the most significant thing was tying the names of the patients to the birds and bringing some of the nature that they can look outside to see into the room.”
To do this efficiently, Art Club decided to split the kids into different groups and have one group work on painting the trees, which they worked on during the morning of Nov. 16, while the other groups will work on the grass and flowers the following Saturdays.
The Art Club students have met a couple of times after school to discuss what they want the mural to look like, making sure everyone has the same idea and to keep it consistent throughout the process.
The club is considering adding wildflowers, including colored cornflowers, butterfly milkweed, and black-eyed Susan. They are making the flowers look like they are in a field, with some far away and others closer.
The room that was picked is small and off to the side of the building but inside there are lots of windows with a door leading to an outside area, which is fenced off, on one side of the room.
“I like the teamwork and being able to work on it with my friends,” said Teresa Chermak, a member of the Art Club and a sophomore at Wadsworth High School.
