News

By Brian Jeffries 

Broadneck Elementary School’s new mural — featuring a garden filled with flowers, bees, and the words “Read,” “Learn,” and “Grow Together” — ended up taking over 18 months to complete. 

The mural at the Arnold school started as a third grade “legacy project” assignment but took on a life of its own after lead painter Gayle Kassal was diagnosed with cancer just a month after starting the mural in March 2022.

“When I first started, it was just supposed to be a portion of the size it is now,” Kassal said. “They wanted to create a special project for the current third grade, and wished to include the third graders from the previous year who missed their project because of COVID.” This has always been a third grade tradition.

A legacy project for third graders at Broadneck Elementary has been a tradition to remember each class that goes through, meant to be enjoyed during their duration remaining years at Broadneck, Kassal said.

The project is largely thanks to a $2,500 grant from the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County. Stephanie Walsh, an art teacher at Broadneck Elementary in 2021, was able to secure the funds needed to begin the project. With the help of the Broadneck Elementary Parent Teacher Organization, her dream of painting a garden mural with her students began to take shape.

Walsh and Kassal had relationship before the Broadneck Elementary mural. They’d crossed paths working on a 2017 mural at Cape St. Clair Elementary in Annapolis. The mural depicts a seagull, the school’s mascot, caring for the Chesapeake Bay.

“She did such a great job; I knew that our students would really benefit from working with her and the space would benefit from her expertise,” Walsh said.

Third and forth graders at Broadneck Elementary help paint a mural with lead painter Gayle Kassal. Kassal was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the project started. (Brian Jeffries)

The Broadneck project was going according to plan until a month after Kassal began. A month later, however, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, forcing her to step away for nearly eight months.

“I had only been working with the students for a three-week residency,” Kassal said. “I was going to take the work home after and fine-tune the project and finish it off. I took it home, and that same week, I found a lump on my breast.”

She underwent a double mastectomy and eventually chemotherapy and radiation.

“One thing led to another; a couple months turned into eight. I was just working on recovering,” she said. 

Thomas Cordts, vice principal at Broadneck, says the school was never in a rush to finish the project. Even though the original mural was supposed to smaller, it was always the school’s plan to expand because the wall space in front of the library is so large.

“We wanted the mural to be student- and artist-created, and we wanted it to be done by the same hands, he said. “So waiting the time to make sure that it was done with the beginning vision was important to us.”

Time went on, and Kassal regained her strength, partially with the help of the Annapolis Dragon Boat Club, a group originally organized to help breast cancer survivors. She said the club gave her soul and muscles the strength to push through her adversary.

After nearly eight months, she regained her health enough to start painting again with the help of her 12-year-old daughter, Skye, and Kassal’s friend’s daughter, Sofia Zinder. Each week, they would meet and take their time with the original 20-foot portion of mural.

“I have a sweet daughter, who is incredibly artistic. She would sit next to me, while we painted one flower at a time,” Kassal said.

For about three months, they’d go through this routine while Kassal slowly regained strength.

“We just chipped away at it, the three of us,” she said. “We played music, had a lot of fun and laughed, and it really helped me get back because they were a support for me, too.”

While she was going through her last rounds of chemo, Kassal proposed expanding the project to take up the entire wall, and applied for a Public art grant through the Maryland State Arts Council  to finish the larger mural.

In January, Kassal learned that she would receive the funding and knew there was still a lot of work to do. She decided to enlist the help of art students from Broadneck High School.

“I asked their art club if anyone was interested, and they were all so thrilled,” she said. “Out of maybe 20 kids, 18 of them were Broadneck Elementary alumni.”

So the project that had been started to ensure the legacies of third and fourth graders expanded to include teachers and high school students.

Now, in a Broadneck Elementary hallway, panels to the right of the library doors are filled with hundreds and hundreds of flowers, all individually designed and painted by every one of the 284 third and fourth grade students during Kassal’s three-week residency in spring 2022. The left side, featuring a bee surfing through pages of a book, was completed by 152 third grade students, along with the high school helpers.

Cordts, who has seen the mural from beginning to end as the vice principal, said he is simply astonished by the project.

“Her dedication to the project as a whole was just far beyond what I would have expected from one particular person,” he said. “She was here nights while we had night custodians. They were interested in what she was doing, and they were even excited to have connection with her.”

Jamie Miller, principal at Broadneck Elementary, said the mural has been received “amazingly.” She said, “When Dr. Bedell, our new superintendent, and members of his cabinet came to tour the school, they were stopped in their tracks by the beauty on the wall, thanks to Gayle and the students.”

Article printed in the Capital Gazette October 13, 2023

https://www.capitalgazette.com/education/ac-cn-boadneck-elementary-mural-cancer