On Wednesday afternoon, Lindsey Boncore, an art teacher at Pottsville Area High School, took a trip back in time by studying the student murals painted on the walls through the years.
"This is the only school I've encountered which actually has a tradition of doing a senior class mural," Boncore said as she passed by images of sunrises and staircases, class rings and checkerboard towers, tidal waves and fish.
"The murals are very noticeable. They're everywhere," Jolyn Rodrian, 18, the Pottsville Area senior who designed the painting for the Class of 2014, said.
"It's a hole in the wall. The concept is us breaking through the school, graduating," Rodrian said Wednesday as she unrolled her concept sketch and student yearbook representatives snapped photos.
Since 1975, the school district has allowed its graduating classes to do "senior murals" in the hallways of the high school building at 16th Street and Elk Avenue. The project was initiated by the high school principal in 1975, Dr. William R. Freed, Maxine Polatz, a Pottsville Area junior, stated in an article published in The Pottsville Republican on April 21, 1979.
"In order to have it done, I had to approve it. But it was Dr. Freed's suggestion. And I thought it was a great idea to have the students paint the murals. And I said 'go to it,' " Dr. William R. Davidson, who was superintendent at the time, said Wednesday.
Over the years, staff advisers to the senior mural project included Doris Reidenhour, Chris Miller-Siple, Beth Shields, Mark Dreisbach and Beth Pillus. Boncore volunteered to take over the duties this year.
The first in the series is on the ground floor. It's an abstract with a lime-green city skyline, the profiles of two students on a bright yellow backdrop, a rising sun and a book inscribed with the words "Class of '75."
The Class of 2014 is putting its mural on the ground floor. This week, the seniors completed more than 50 percent of it.
Beyond the broken-brick frame is green grass, a blue sky and a tree with a crimson graduation cap hanging on a branch.
"That tree represents us, the seniors, branching out," Rodrian said.
Boncore liked the location of the 2014 mural.
"If that hole was really there in the wall, we'd be facing east," Boncore said. So, she's making sure the senior artists show evidence of the rising sun.
While listening to "Ocean Avenue" by Yellowcard on Wednesday afternoon, senior Margot Shrift, 18, was standing on a ladder, blending freshly-applied white paint into the mural's blue sky with a brush dipped in water.
"Use more water," Boncore said.
"More water?" Shrift asked.
"You really want it to blend. That actually looks kind of cool," Boncore said.
"We have to change the color of the grass. That's like an alligator green. We need something bright and happy, maybe a pastel green, and details which suggest it's grass and not something out of a coloring book," Rodrian said.
On Wednesday, Boncore did an inventory of senior murals, and listed them by the years they were painted and their locations:
- Ground floor: 2009, 2013, 1994, 2011, 1995, 1975, 1976, 1989, 2014, 1977, 1991, 1993, 2010 and 2012.
- First floor: 1982, 1985, 1984, 1990, 1981, 1979, 1980, 1988, 1987, 1986 and 1983.
- Second floor: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2008.
- East stairwell, between the second and third floors: 2000.
- Third floor: 2006 and 2007.
- Cafeteria: 1992.
Boncore said she didn't find a mural in the high school to represent the Class of 1978.
"You won't find a year on it, but this is 1978's," Kim Pekarik, a paraprofessional at the high school and a member of that class, said Wednesday, pointing to one on the ground floor.
It's a recreation of the cover of the 1977 Kansas album "Point of Know Return," a ship tipping over a waterfall. It was painted by Joseph Endicott, member of the Class of 1978, according to John R. Powers, Pottsville, the retired dean of students.
Boncore said that's one of four student-made murals that aren't part of the senior mural project. "This was a student project. That's not associated with a senior mural," Boncore said.
"Linsday's right. It was not a senior project. It was not a senior mural," Powers said Thursday. Powers taught numerous subjects at the high school from 1971 to 1999, when he became dean. He retired in 2012.
He said that mural was a fun project he gave senior Endicott permission to do. While Endicott was struggling with academics, Powers said he had artistic talent.
Endicott could not be reached for comment this week.
"Joe's still out and about. I run into him all the time," Powers said.
The other three murals Boncore found during her inventory that are not part of the senior mural project include one in the band hallway on the ground floor, one near the boy's gym on the first floor and one in the east stairwell on the landing between the first and second floor.
There are long stretches of white space in the halls of Pottsville High, and Boncore said the senior mural project will continue for many years to come "as long there are seniors interested in doing them."