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Canberra Today 11°/14° | Saturday, April 20, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Mural celebrates school anniversary

The unveiling
The unveiling
THE entire community of Rosary Primary School in Watson braved the elements to celebrate its 50th anniversary today with the unveiling of a 17 metre mural created by former Canberra artist Michael Winters.
The project, according to principal Maureen Doszpot, had been the brainchild of deputy head, Melinda Hall-O’Brien.
Visible from the street, it depicts scenes from the life of the school over the past half century, partly based on more than 100 past and present photographs provided to Winters as reference material, with a specific request for the Dominican nuns, who established the school, and its patron Saint Dominic, to be incorporated into the design.Former school member Marie Shore assisted founding principals Sisters Mauro Campbell and June Peck in the unveiling, to “oohs” and “aahs” from the assembled pupils.

Winters explains his mural
Winters explains his mural
Winters said he had used the idea of “pages of the school’s history blowing in the wind, to evoke the passing of time”. Working from a scale drawing, he created the mural in monochrome and colour in his studio in Dubbo on large transportable panels, assembled at the school for installation on a wall at the front of the school in Fleming Street, Watson.

He told the crowd that when undertaking an art commission such as this, you had to meet those who commissioned you half way. In his finished work, which had only been  installed from  5.50 this morning, he had incorporated a string  of rosary beads and  made reference to indigenous Australians, an import motif in the school and to the ethos of Rosary Primary that “we should tread on God’s earth lightly.”

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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