The Whitefish Community Library and Stumptown Art Studio have partnered to form the Mural Making Club, which is currently working on its first mural. 

Around a dozen middle and high school students have been meeting at the library for a few weeks on Wednesdays from 2:30-4:30 p.m. to work on a mountain mural in the entranceway.  

The mural is nearly halfway complete, and there is still time to grab a brush and join in the fun. Students ages 10 to 18 are welcome to participate in the free activity. 

Stumptown Art Studio instructor Bri Leslie is overseeing the project. She has painted murals and taught students, but she has never instructed a mural project until now. Her experience with both has been key. 

“It has gone super smooth so far,” she said. 

Leslie designed the landscape on an iPad. Due to the painting’s location in a hallway, she was unable to use a projector to sketch in the starting lines, so she used the old-school method of making a grid on the wall. 

She also had the brilliant idea of assigning color codes to areas of the mural, in essence, creating a giant paint-by-number project.  

The piece took a lot of planning. 

“They are learning many skills during these short sessions -- not only artistic but also how to set up and clean up their workspace, work together as a team and manage their tight work schedules,” said Melanie Drown, executive director of Stumptown Art Studio. “We are three weeks into the project, and the students are doing an amazing job.” 

Gina Schiff, Whitefish Library youth activities director, helped hatch the idea for the mural with Grace Isabell, education director at Stumptown. A discussion between the two after a summer reading program presentation led to the notion for a library mural.