MANSFIELD — Demetrius Howell stood over a group of seventh grade students, each with a different shade of blue on their paintbrush. A large black canvas with the profile of a tiger sketched in white sat atop their cluster of desks.
Howell is an artist, clothing designer and advisor for the new mural club at Mansfield Middle School. He and Luke Beekman of Mankind Murals have spent the last few weeks working with students to create three, five-by-five foot canvases that will hang on display inside the building.
“We’re trying to make a lasting impact with art, working with the kids to help create both the design and the actual finished piece,” Beekman said.
The mural club is one of the newest offerings in the middle school’s Tyger Clubs program, a series of after-school activities funded by the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant. Mural club members meet on Mondays and can attend different clubs on other days of the week.
Seventh grader Josephine Edwards said she signed up because she finds art fun, especially painting.
“It’s relaxing,” she said. “If you’re mad or something, you can just color in the lines and it calms you down.”
The students started by coming up with a concept for their pieces. They wanted to incorporate outer space as well as the school mascot.
Howell adapted an existing image of a tiger wearing an astronaut’s helmet, then projected it onto the canvas for students to trace. The next week, they began painting the background — a star-speckled sky with varying shades of blue and a black hole swirling in the foreground.
Seventh grader Briyonnia Bowman said part of the painting’s story is that the tiger has managed to escape it.
“We added the black hole because we all wanted some type of thing that you could jump out of,” she said.
Howell mixed the shades and assigned each student a portion of the canvas. Then he stood back and watched, offering occasional bits of advice.
“It’s kind of like a vacuum cleaner or cutting the grass,” he said, miming the stroke of a paint brush in a smooth, continuous, back-and-forth motion.
Enisia Lee, school liaison and co-site coordinator for the clubs, said she hopes the program will provide students with a positive outlet for expressing themselves.
“Our students go through a lot,” she said. “They have to know how to overcome challenges and be able to express themselves and how they’re feeling in positive ways.”
Lee and Beekman came up with the idea for mural club by adapting a similar program they ran for incarcerated youth in 2018.
“Painting in general can be very therapeutic,” Beekman said. “Once they get into the flow of painting, they start sharing things. They start talking to you and they start talking to each other.
“When we get to put it in like a group setting and make it a big canvas that everyone’s working on, I think that’s really when we see some magical things happen.”
Stacey Dorsey, an intervention specialist and co-site coordinator at Mansfield Middle, said she believes the chance to see their artwork hanging in the hall will boost students’ self-esteem.
“The students are always excited about painting or designs. They doodle a lot. They’re very creative,” she said. “This not only gives them a way to express their emotions, but for other people to see what they can do.
“Students love seeing their work. It makes them feel so good when they see their name or can see that they played a part in being creative,” she said. “They bring that back to the classroom and they excel.”
Edwards said she’s looking forward to seeing the murals on display.
“I find it cool because I get a chance to say ‘I did that,'” she said.
While the murals will likely hang in the middle school for years to come, Howell said he hopes to leave a different kind of legacy in the building — being the role model he wishes he had growing up.
“I feel like I can teach them things that I wasn’t able to be taught (when I was in school),” he said. “Maybe I could be that bridge for the kids to get to a better lifestyle.”
