Wilbur Elementary Opens Doors to Art

Two Van Gogh replicas grace the kindergarten doors. Modern artist Wayne Thiebaud’s “California Cakes” will soon welcome students to lunch at the cafeteria entryway. And John Singer Sargent’s “Carnation, Lilly, Lilly, Rose,” a depiction of two young girls in a garden, adorns the library portal.

Dubbed by organizers “the school that is a work of art,” Wilbur Avenue Elementary is fast becoming the most decorated school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Doors Project, the brainchild of a Reseda father of a Wilbur student, has put artworks on several doors on campus in an effort to integrate art into the children’s lives.

“I wanted kids to experience art on a daily basis so they can develop an appreciation for it, so that it’s not foreign to them or just something they have to go to a museum to see,” said Bruce Fier, whose son Zack Reed-Fier is in third grade at the school.

Four students from Cal State Northridge professor Bruce Everett’s independent study class created the art. And Zack’s grandmother, Vivian Fier Walker, is in the middle of painting Matisse’s “Collioure” on the door of the audiovisual room.

“It’s not forgery,” said art student Deanna Sanderson, who has painted two of the six so far. “But we’re trying to get as close to the original as possible.”

Everett said his students have come away from the project with a better understanding of technique.

“They have a greater appreciation of the nuances and subtleties of a painting,” he said.

The Wilbur Avenue Booster Club provides most of the $100 it takes to create each painting, including sharing the cost of a $50 gift certificate to Continental Arts Supply in Reseda as a stipend for the students.

The group said vandalism of the paintings worries them less than erosion and exposure to the elements.

“They are not going to last forever,” Fier said.