At our first Community Meeting of the 2025-26 school year, we unveiled our new mural that now graces the front of our school. We want to thank our faculty and admin team for working together this past school year to identify an artist and theme for this wonderful work of art that greets everyone when they arrive at our school.
We are delighted to have worked with visual artist Austin Gregory Ohm, who created the mural for us and joined us for the unveiling on September 5, 2025. Below is an excerpt from Austin’s speech to the community. His words ring especially true for our school community because of our commitment to collaboration, courage, and seeing art and beauty in nature and all the subjects we teach.
“This mural is called “Harmony and Flow” because…a school is in harmony when all the members of its community agree to work together. When all the different and diverse pieces fit together, an amazing and harmonious container for learning is created.
Equally important for growth is the strong progressive movement of flow. Flow guides and protects, it offers safety and comfort, and creates a shared sense of purpose. Flow also provides a force for us to struggle against – just like the salmon that are compelled to swim upstream. They don’t do it because it’s easy, it takes incredible amounts of energy and effort, but somehow they know that because it’s hard they are doing the right thing. And like those salmon we all have times in our lives that the struggle against the flow is crucially important for personal growth and the formation of our individual identities.
In this painting we see flow suggestive in circular movement of the fish and water. And we see Harmony represented in the color palette, composition, and by the geometric patterns in the fish.
Socrates called geometry “the art of the ever-true”. And I believe this geometry symbolizes a golden truth, a foundational fact, from which we build trust with each other.
It’s important to have agreed upon truths within a community. The exaggerated geometry in these fish are a visual reminder that we are all essentially connected from the shared structures that form our DNA and brain-cells to the organization of the universe we exist in.
Thank you so much for trusting me with this very important project.
As you walk past this mural day after day I hope that it catches the eye of your imagination at the most unexpected times and inspires you to see the world from a fresh perspective.”
Thank you Austin for the beautiful gift of your words and your art to our community. You will forever be part of the story of our school.
