Colorful characters pop off the left wall of the Scudder dining room, hoping to breathe new life into the Mid-Pacific campus.

Students painted a mural with Jasper Wong, the founder and lead director of World Wide Walls (formerly POW! WOW!).

World Wide Walls is a non-profit organization that is responsible for many of the murals in Kaka’ako, especially around SALT.

Students in Digital Art and Film Teacher Meeka Fontaine’s Art Certificate class each created a unique character to be included on the wall.

Senior Natalie Maunakea said the process of the character design was simple because they could only use a few colors, which made painting on the large canvas easier.

For the characters themselves, students each made a character that embodied Mid-Pacific to them. Maunakea created a character that “felt like her,” she said. Wong then took all of the characters and put them together into one cohesive piece.

Students, in addition to creating almost all of the characters in the design, assisted in the creation of the mural as well, mixing paints, dropping colors, and outlining characters.

“It was very fun. Jasper Wong was a very good mentor, he taught us a lot about painting a mural, such as techniques for painting a mural, and ways to avoid drips, since on the wall the droplets will show if its not a smooth surface,” said sophomore Katelyn Lew.

One of the student artists who worked on the mural, junior Jessica Lee, said she is quite pleased with the progress so far.

“It’s turning out really good, I love how vibrant it is, and how it covers the entire wall. It’s amazing,” Lee said.

Wong and the two art teachers, Jill Johnson and Meeka Fontaine, want to find ways to ” further beautify the campus with art,” Wong said.

“There aren’t any murals here, so we thought, let’s find a way to bring that to the campus,” Wong said.

In terms of Wong’s work, making murals on campus and collaborating with students, the future looks bright.

“This mural [allowed us] to figure out what the process was like. What walls make sense, how we deal with the maintenance of the murals, and what kind of contracts and agreements we need to put up,” Wong said. “We’ve figured out a lot of the pieces to do this first one, so it should be easier to do future ones. It’s just a matter of trying to find the right walls.”

As a Mid-Pacific parent with one child in fourth grade and one in preschool here, Wong hopes to become an asset and help the students here through his works.

“I want to be a bigger part of Mid-Pacific and its community, especially through public art, and art in general,” he said.

The completed mural is visible on the left wall of Scudder. Feel free to stop by and appreciate it when you go and get your lunch.