Edison Elementary students paint a ‘new heart’ on school wall
Students at Thomas Edison Elementary are nearly finished painting a mural on a 100-foot wall depicting children at play, exploring nature and enjoying the great outdoors.
The fourth-graders, who have been working on the mural for the last several weeks, have received artistic guidance by retired Los Angeles Unified teacher Helene Cob, a Burbank resident who was brought on to help create the mural by the school’s PTA.
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“[The wall has] been sitting there empty for years and years and years,” Cob said.
The 7-foot-high wall faces traffic on Keystone Street.
Students help paint a mural at Edison Elementary on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016.
Cob painted the outlines of the mural and has worked with small groups of students as they painted, sometimes spontaneously adding flowers or other images.
“It’s something [that] when people drive by, they’ll say, ‘Wow, look at what this school has done.’ I want everyone to know it was kids who did it,” Cob said.
The project marks the 25th mural in Los Angeles that Cob has worked on with students, and it is the first mural she’s painted that is located in Burbank, not far from where she lives herself.
“In schools in L.A., where I’ve done murals, it’s given everyone a new heart,” she said.
The mural also features a nod to the school’s namesake, with a quote from Thomas Edison: “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
