With the construction of the contemporary Health and Wellness Center, a gaping blue wall has been left untouched next to the nurses’ office. However, this is about to change. Led by GA alum Mr. Daniel Lipshutz ‘08, the wall will be transformed into a stunning mural created with the theme “Mind, Body and Heart.”
“Thousands of people involved in this creative project is what excites me most,” Upper School Visual Arts Teacher Ms. Sarah Ritz said.
The project began with alumni and muralist Daniel Lipshutz visiting all three divisions of the school when he presented the idea for the mural for the first time. He invited every student to create a design using the prompt “What does Mind, Body and Heart mean to you?”
“After that first day, we had about 3000 drawings, which is so amazing, it’s hard to really imagine,” Mr. Daniel Lipshutz said. “And then it’s hard to move them around, like a whole suitcase of drawings from that one day, but there’s so much wonderful stuff in there, so many beautiful ideas.”
However, the student involvement in the creative process for the mural did not stop there. He returned to Germantown Academy the next week and worked with multiple groups of students to begin mapping out potential designs.
“We took all of those ideas from the first day, all of those drawings, and started looking at them in different bunches and talking about themes that were coming up, or imagery that felt important to the community, or what those students that day saw as of interest,” Mr. Lipshutz said. “And then creating new ideas and stories and like webs of connections from there.”
From these discussions, these groups were able to come up with visions and concepts that could embody the school’s vision for wellness.
“The theme ‘Mind, Body and Heart’ was inspired by the mural being located in the new health and wellness wing of the school,” Mr. Lipshutz said. “I think the school’s desire and initiative that health and wellness is a really important part of student life that constitutes, not just a nurse’s office where people can physically get well, or academic facilities where people can use their body and work together, but hopefully, a full spectrum sense of wellness, emotional, physical, mental,”
With so many ideas to sift through, Mr. Lipshutz and his team of students are still figuring out what the final piece will look like.
“It’s starting to get a little clearer, but nothing too specific yet,” Mr. Lipshutz said. “There was a lot of talk in the sessions that we had last week about the journey of GA because this is going to be something that intends to represent the entire community, which goes all the way from Lower School through the Middle and Upper Schools, through people like me, who were at GA and now are on the other side, but coming back, and the whole staff and faculty.”
Many students are reflecting on their hopes for the mural because it is such a major, community-oriented project.
“I came to GA to work on my mind and my body and my heart,” Anushka Sen ‘28 said. “So having a mural that represents all those things, really represents the things that you know you want to do in school.”
The next steps for this project are on the horizon as Mr. Lipshutz sorts through the thousands of unique depictions of interpretations of the theme, and pieces together the mural’s design. After some community paint days in the late winter or early spring, the final project will hopefully be unveiled around May or June.
The vivid mural will be the first thing people’s eyes gravitate to when they walk into the Live Well Lobby, prominently displaying Germantown Academy’s values. With everyone in the community having a hand in the mural’s design, Mr. Lipshutz and the Visual Arts department hopes this will be an exceptional piece representing every individual, as well as a way to strengthen the community’s culture of collaboration as we all work together toward the end masterpiece.
“There’s nothing more exciting to me than having many people, many ages, babies through senior citizens that all care about GA, contributing collaboratively to this process,” Ms. Ritz said. “So it is pretty special.”