Pollinators — Abraham Lincoln School Mural

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Pollinators at Abraham Lincoln School turns young students' drawings into an outdoor Bangor artwork. Peter Walls worked with the school and Bangor Beautiful to create a mural facing Chapin Park, bringing the imagery of a pollinator garden onto a public-facing wall. Its distinctive story is how it was made: children helped supply the visual ideas, an experienced artist organized them and students took part in painting the result.

The commissioner identifies the school off Forest Avenue and records the completed mural as a 2024 project. View it from permitted public pedestrian space on the park side, following any current school or park directions. Keep school entrances and activity clear, and leave people using the school outside your photographs. The subject here is the exterior artwork; an art stop does not provide permission to enter classrooms, gardens or school grounds that are restricted.

The school's own project account describes a lesson before the painting. Walls and organizer Annette Dodd made a video about murals and pollinators, then students created drawings representing parts of a garden. The artist assembled those contributions into an overall design. This sequence is worth remembering when looking at the wall. Its finished image has an organizing structure, but that structure also carries many smaller acts of imagination rather than a single person's drawing simply enlarged.

In his independent project statement, Walls explains that the design needed to accommodate participation by more than one hundred and fifty children from preschool through third grade. High-school art students helped with finishing touches. The challenge was therefore both artistic and practical: create an image in which very young contributors could take part while still arriving at a coherent public work. Look for the relationship between individual forms and the larger scene, treating that cooperation as part of the meaning.

The pollinator subject gives the collaboration an ecological connection. University of Maine Cooperative Extension explains that pollination begins when pollen reaches the receptive part of a flower and that bees carry pollen while collecting food. A painted garden can make relationships between flowers and visiting insects easier to consider. The mural is a visual invitation to learn, rather than a scientific diagram promising that every represented creature performs the same ecological role.

Bangor Beautiful describes its school program as joining art, nature and community. That aim suggests a useful approach to viewing: choose one small image, consider how it contributes to the surrounding composition, then step back to see the shared result. Younger viewers can talk about shapes or colors that attract them; adults can consider how a public commission makes room for student authorship. There is no need to know every plant's name to appreciate the experience of making something together.

For photographs, show the overall wall from a safe permitted position, then select a detail that preserves the artwork's character without including identifiable students or other people. Credit Peter Walls and the student collaboration when sharing. Pollinators offers an unusually direct encounter between public art and education: a garden theme becomes a shared painting, and the work of learning becomes visible beyond the classroom. A considerate, close look can keep that human process present alongside the colorful finished image.

Fun facts

1. Peter Walls assembled student ideas into the mural design.
2. Young children painted with help from older art students.
3. The completed 2024 mural faces Chapin Park.

Read the official sources →

Capture

1. Use a permitted public position for the whole-wall view.
2. Choose an artwork detail without identifiable students or school visitors.

Social

Pollinators brings student ideas onto a public-facing Bangor wall.

Peter Walls helped organize individual drawings into a shared mural.

The project joined art-making with learning about garden relationships.

High-school art students helped younger painters with finishing touches.

The commissioner records the Abraham Lincoln mural as completed in 2024.

Look for how a small form contributes to the whole scene.

Respect school directions, keep entrances clear and protect students’ privacy.

What does collaborative art make possible that one person’s painting might not?

Hashtags

1. #Cre8Travel
2. #Maine
3. #BangorMaine
4. #PublicArt

Sources & visitor information

• www.bangorbeautiful.org
• abrahamlincoln.bangorschools.net
• www.peterwallsstudio.com
• extension.umaine.edu