Cheerful mural greets Sussex Consortium students, staff

A cheerful mural greets Sussex Consortium students and staff, thanks to the work of head custodian and artist Dan Kimmel.

Kimmel previously worked at Mariner Middle, and when he moved to the Consortium right before last summer, he noticed too many blank walls for his liking. A mural would bring color to the building, he thought, and Assistant Principal Liz Cherico agreed.

“The whole school needed something,” Cherico said. “We’re lucky to have an amazing artist here.”

Kimmel’s artwork is known throughout the district; at Mariner, he also painted a patriotic mural of an eagle clutching a crest that depicts a Viking, Cape’s mascot, in the school lobby.

Kimmel already had designs on a Consortium-themed painting of butterflies in a sunflower field. 

The different colored butterflies each represent a colored hallway in the building, he said, noting the puzzle piece, a symbol for autism, painted in the sunflower head.

The mural took several months to paint, Kimmel said, and students enjoyed watching a blank wall transform into art.

“They’re brutally honest,” he laughed. “They told me if they liked one butterfly better than another, and they quizzed me on different types of butterflies.”

Kimmel said he already has ideas on ways to spruce up more hallways throughout the school.

“We’re going to let him run with it,” Cherico smiled.