Last school year, Faith Echeverria ’19 and Kate Hoekstra ‘19 came up with an idea that would take over their summer. They wanted to create a mural that could be displayed at NC that features poetry and their art.

“I decided to do this because I want to go to art school and having this in my portfolio would be amazing,” Echeverria said. “Plus, Mr. [Frank] Alletto is a great teacher and he kept pushing me to do it. He knew I had a vision and after that told me that I should do this.”

These two girls, along with Sydney Weber ‘18, Ava McLean ‘19, Hayley Mirabile ‘19, Tegan Murrell ‘19, Francesca Restani ‘19, Alex Kuptel ‘18, Odin Metzger ‘19, and Heather Munyon ’19, were a part of the design and painting team to help construct this mural, Alletto, English teacher and coordinator of the mural process, said.

“I can’t say that students ‘helped’ with it,” Alletto said. “They’ve done it themselves. Without [Hoekstra and Echeverria], there would be nothing but plywood and my books of poetry. They made the project happen.”

The mural will display a wall poem titled “The World is in Pencil” by Todd Boss. Alletto gained inspiration from Sandra Beasley, a former guest poet at LT who spoke about wall poetry in Charlotte, he said.

“The Charlotte poems are on the outside walls of many buildings in the uptown area,” Alletto said. “I love this idea, bringing poetry into public spaces where they can be read casually before people’s anti-poetry deflector shields go up. That’s what I hope this wall poem does.”

Construction for the mural began during the summer in Alletto’s room, and is now being finished in an outside location. Organizers planned to mount the mural the week of Sept. 11. Each work session takes about five hours of strenuous work, Echeverria said.

“Hopefully LT lets me do something else like this again because it’s such an honor and no matter how time consuming and heart wrenching it was, I loved every second,” Echeverria said. “When I started, I hadn’t painted a lot and I was scared, but once you start painting you literally don’t want to stop.”

For Echeverria, she plans to sell more of her artwork after the mural is completed, she said.

“You catch a rhythm while painting, that if you stop, you know it won’t be the same when you start again,” Echeverria said. “My main strategy that I think helped me the most while painting was just listening to music. Blackbear, uglygod, mansionz, and Lilpump really helped me on this one.”

The mural will be located next to the side entrance of the Reber center, visible as students walk up the stairs at exit 7. The main goal in putting this on display at NC is to raise awareness of poetry, Alletto said.

“Poetry is so misunderstood,” Alletto said. “It frightens people. It frustrates people. I’m hoping that unsuspecting readers will be taken in by the beauty of the painting and the initial ease of the poem.  It delivers immediate insight without being cryptic or vague. I think many readers will be surprised by the accessibility of it.”