Ava Kuling's art will be available for viewing at the gallery attached to the public library until the end of June. (submitted)

By Susan McNeil

Student art

Grad uses student life to create 36-panel artwork of school experience

Jun 17, 2025 | 6:00 AM

One of this year’s graduating students from Carlton Comprehensive High School drew inspiration from her fellow students to create a 36-panel mural that now hangs at the community library.

Ava Kuling said she likes to observe the people around her, and that’s how she got the ideas for the many panels that make up the mural.

“I’ve always been the kind of student at Carlton who’s really listened to other people, and I’ve always heard about people that wanted an art project, that kind of included everything that our school,” she said.

Part of the piece is a sports section that includes the Senior A volleyball and basketball teams and their coaches. She also added panels for alumni like Gage Grassick and Sophie Larsen, who both play at the University of Saskatchewan.

Because Ava likes to travel and the trips she has taken have left an impression, she included those as well. She went to Vietnam several years ago and then Europe this year with the Prince Albert Travel Club.

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“The art project is basically just a lot of people’s names. It’s like it’s graffiti art. So I do everyone’s names and like graffiti letters. The colours and designs on their page or in their name kind of represent them, so I think it was kind of cool,” Ava explained.

To complete the work, she asked each teacher in the project to fill out a postcard and answer several questions. One question was about the teacher’s favourite memory of teaching, and another was the funniest or most embarrassing memory from being a teacher.

The entire project took her 166 hours to finish and she started about three months ago.

“I finished like the outline of it before we left, and then I Sharpie the outline of everything was like a pretty thick border. And then I color everything in, like, pencil crayon and it almost looks like I used, like, pastels because I color everything pretty hard with the pencil crayon.”

The school had the work laminate which made the colours really pop out.

It was her vision of inclusiveness that helped her art teacher decide that the work would be good to hang up in the public art gallery attached to the John M. Cuelenaere Library downtown, where it will stay until the end of June.

Ava said she appreciates that the experience has pushed her into directions she hadn’t taken before. She spent hours creating the work on her own, taking her entire class time, which was new to her.

“My principal and my teacher allowed me to work anywhere I wanted in the school and just be pretty independent with this whole project,” she said. “I feel like that was a really unique experience that I could enjoy just being able to create my own schedule with it.”

Two school staff that she felt really influenced her education this year are her principal, Jen Ferguson and her travel club advisor, Sam Zurakowski.

Coming up this fall, Ava will still be in school but at the University of Saskatchewan taking an education degree.

She hopes to teach high school level students and will take the first two years in Prince Albert.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social