A mural at South Valley Middle School has got back its tiger and a local family’s story has come full circle.
Twenty-four years ago, middle school student James Lopez sketched out a vibrant outdoor scene filled with wild animals for a mural on the school’s C-Wing.
Painted over a series of weekends and lunch breaks, Lopez along with a team of student artists, all of whom are still friends today, created a lasting public art piece that has survived unscathed.
Over the years, thousands of students have passed by the mural, called “Whispers of Wilderness” with its jubilant deer, rabbits and raccoons frolicking against a sea of blue.
The mural covers two classroom doors, and when one of the doors had to be replaced, leaving a plain green rectangle in the middle of the nature scene, Lopez’s son Josiah, an eighth-grader at the school, volunteered to fill the empty space with a tiger, the school’s mascot.
“When I got the OK to do it, I was very excited to restore the mural,” said Josiah, his dad looking on with pride. He is a sketcher like his dad, but had recently taken a hiatus from art to pursue sports. Painting the tiger and completing the mural helped rekindle his artistic side.
“This brought me back to art,” he said.
