A group of students have begun the creation of a brand new mural set to hang on the wall of the guidance office. The mural will depict an underwater scene with seahorses swimming throughout a coral reef.

“It represents the diversity of our school because we’re going to have a whole bunch of different coral types, a whole bunch of
different sea life in it,” Cienna Cate ‘25 said. “It represents how together we are, it represents how we will come together to take care of our community.”

Guidance Administrative Assistant Ducky Jones is working with the group.

“Pretty much immediately when I walked into the guidance office, I saw that it needed something,” Jones said. “This school has a bunch of white walls, and it’s a little sad to look at. I think it just doesn’t really reflect the vibrancy of our community. So I’m just like, ‘We need something here that makes people feel more at home when they come into the guidance office.’”

During an initial meeting, students worked with Jones to connect the image to a deeper meaning.

“My first meeting with the kids kind of went like, ‘What are the similarities between BHS and a coral reef?’” Jones said. “I got answers like, ‘Oh, it’s our vibrancy, it’s our diversity, it’s our like, lots of little things in different groups of people working together to create this community, this ecosystem of BHS.’”

The final form of the mural will resemble a collage as students will be working on different pieces of the mural individually. These pieces will later be attached to the larger piece.

“We’re going to have three pieces of wood with one on top of the other,” Alexander Paxton ‘26 said. “So we’re going to have three different pieces of art all tied together.”

The group has started by laying out different ideas for the final piece on paper.

“We’re taking inspiration from different artists on different abstract pieces, realistic pieces, and we’re putting them into our own work,” Cate said.

This project is also serving a dual purpose for Jones who is working towards their teaching degree.

“I have for a while been interested in being an art teacher,” Jones said. “I am actually working through the peer review process with Emily Woratzeck. So this is practice for me to be a teacher, and I am learning a lot. It’s very exciting.”

The students have been given full creative control, although Jones is full of ideas to help them along the way.

“It’s really up to the students what they want to put in the mural, but I had the idea that we could cut out seahorses from mirror vinyl,” Jones said. “Then when you come and look at the mural, you see yourself in the seahorses. It’s cheesy, yeah, but also kind of cute.”

If any students are interested in helping out in creating the mural, they can email Ducky Jones at [email protected]. The students meet after school on Wednesdays, although weekly attendance is not mandatory.

“The whole point of it is to basically have everybody put their mark on it, and just celebrate how beautiful and different we all are,” Jones said.