Bassett Students Paint Mural
May 18, 2012
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
The Henry County Sheriff's Office is becoming a canvas for local artwork.
Graphic design students at Bassett High School painted a mural in the sheriff's office on Kings Mountain Road this week. It features a deputy's badge and American flag with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background.
It is one of four murals that BHS students will paint at the sheriff's office before the end of the next school year, according to Kristina Weldin, the school's graphic design teacher.
"It's very pretty," said sheriff's Lt. Col. Steve Eanes. "It gives a little more character to the sheriff's office."
Eanes noted that walls in the sheriff's office generally have appeared plain and bare.
Weldin said her students used Adobe Photoshop, an image design and editing computer software package, to develop designs for the murals.
The design painted Wednesday and Thursday was projected onto the wall, and the students took it from there.
"All they requested from the sheriff's office ... was a gallon (each) of red, yellow and blue paint," said Melany Stowe, public information officer for the Henry County Schools. She said the students mixed those colors to develop other colors for the mural.
The sheriff's office also provided the pupils some paint brushes and drop cloths, Weldin said.
Eanes said what he likes best about the mural is that the students designed and painted it themselves.
"They're doing a great job," he said Thursday afternoon as the painting continued.
Weldin added that she wants the students to feel a sense of achievement.
"It's one thing ... to come up with great designs and another to see those designs used in the real world," she said.
A future mural will focus on crime scene investigation. It will feature tools and techniques used by investigators, such as fingerprints, chalk outlines of bodies and a magnifying glass, Weldin said.
Another mural will pay tribute to fallen officers. A flat-screen television will be incorporated into it, according to the teacher.
The other mural will feature a police cruiser bearing a new look that she understands the sheriff's office aims to give its vehicles, she said.
