MCHS Mural Artists
Tom Winter
The Prescription Shop Mural adds Beauty to Downtown Stuart
T
By Jackie Holfelder
he mural that graces the wall on The Prescription Shop in downtown Stuart is much more than a mesmerizing and fascinating work of art. It also demonstrates what is possible when people with a similar vision work towards a goal selflessly and
without ego. Kim Jones has owned The Prescription Shop, located just west of the roundabout at the intersection of MLK Boulevard and Colorado Avenue, for five years. Every morning when she pulled into the parking lot and saw the big blank wall, she thought what an improvement it would be if she could get some students to paint on it to perk it up. Considering that the wall is 70-feet long and between 12-14 feet high, Kim knew it couldn’t be a casual little project. She approached Amanda Jones (no relation), an art teacher at Martin County High School (MCHS) in 2016, but Amanda was involved with another project and couldn’t undertake the mural. In January, 2018 Amanda, joined by fellow MCHS art teacher Bryan Johnson, met again with Kim. The store owner was still enthused and definitely wanted to go ahead with the mural, stressing it should be the brainchild of the students.
4 MartinArts | Spring | Summer 2019
She repeated her willingness for them to paint anything they wanted, so long as it was tasteful. Thus began a process that would result in work on the mural finally beginning on October 20, 2018. On December 29, 2018 the impressive work of art was completed. During that period, volunteers worked on the project virtually every weekend. In the intervening months, there were many tasks that needed to be undertaken, although one major one was not met with enthusiastic support. After making the decision to have the history of Stuart as the subject, Bryan decided to take the lead art students to the Feed Store (the Stuart Heritage Museum) located on Flagler Street to do research and get ideas about what should be included in the painting. He recalled that initially they had some difficulty buying into history as the theme, but after discovering so many fascinating details about the area, they became more and more enthusiastic. Simultaneously, says Amanda, the nuts and bolts of the permitting process needed to be attended to. She had the young artists participate every step of the way. The end result was that they all learned so much about Art in Public Places that what could have been a tedious process became a great learning experience. As the project unrolled and the mural
