Teacher and students work together for St Mary's School mural

Mural models Axton Mellow (far right), Kimai Nicholson-Kahukura (second from right) and Zakiah Luoni-Richards (third from right) with Nadine Kaua and her Year 5 students in front of their mural. Photo / Bevan Conley

The new mural at St Mary's School, a collaboration between art teacher Nadine Kaua and her students, is now finished and on display on the wall of the school library.

Kaua said that she was asked by principal Jacquie Luxton to design a mural for the wall, and from there she and a core group of Year 5 students worked together to come up with an idea.

"The key feature that we kept coming back to was the cross, and the faith of the school was at the centre of things," Kaua said.

"Then we looked at their pepeha [an introduction to establish identity and heritage], where a St Mary's student from Whanganui comes from. Ko Ruapehu te maunga [Ruapehu is the mountain], Ko Whanganui te awa [Whanganui is the river], Ko Hato mere te kura [St Mary's is the school]."

After the design was finalised, the students applied an undercoat on each side of the plywood, before preparing colour charts.

Kaua painted the final plan to scale during the Covid-19 lockdown, and when school resumed that image was projected on to the panels, and the artwork could begin.

She said the kids had been involved in the entire creative process, from prepping the boards to drawing up the mural itself.

"I had a plan, and we worked from that the whole way through. The kids started drawing up the boards and painting them in June. We really raced at the end to get it finished because we lost so much time during lockdown.

"The only part I painted myself is the kōtare (kingfisher) that you can see on the left. That's a kaitiaki (guardian) for my family, because we live on a farm and we have them around us all the time.

"We usually had two students painting per panel until the bulk of it was completed, then we refined the team to do fine detail, like the whānau.

The whānau in question, at the bottom right of the mural, is made up of students Axton Mellow, Zakiah Luoni-Richards, Emily Paterson and Kimai Nicholson-Kuhukura, alongside teacher Ian Kerr.

"We just sat outside one day and took some photos, and the kids were brilliant," Kaua said.

"In the end, we decided on having them as a little group of mixed ages, with one of the teachers as a stand-in koro. We actually call him koro Kerr, just don't tell him that."

The mural is painted on five panels of marine-grade plywood, with a total size of 6m by 2.4m. It has been entered by the school into the Resene Mural masterpiece competition.