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Local mural on historic building set to be finished

mural
Mark Collins
/
KBIA

A local art teacher is planning to use her skills to help finish an incomplete mural on a historic Columbia building. Jessie Starbuck, an art teacher at Southern Boone Primary School, is also on the board of the North Central Neighborhood Association in Columbia. Starbuck said she first heard about the project when she moved to the neighborhood and joined the board.

Gennie Pfannenstiel, a resident of the neighborhood, began the mural with some students from nearby Field Elementary School.

"She had the students at Field interview elder members of the community who had a lot of memories of their experience growing up in that neighborhood and they recorded those interviews with those people that were initially interviewed for the project and what they did is they began to paint the stories of the people that were being interviewed," Starbuck said.

Pfannenstiel and the students never finished the mural because the building was set to be demolished. However, Grove Construction bought the building earlier this year and still plans to use it. Now, Starbuck said she believes it is very important to finish the mural.

"As an art teacher, I felt pretty obligated to step up and offer any support that I could give to finish the project," Starbuck said.

Starbuck has gotten into contact with Pfannenstiel, who still had her old sketches and audio interviews with the elderly neighborhood residents. Starbuck said she plans to use Pfannenstiel's sketches to finish drawing the mural.

"I'm working to sketch the rest of the image up onto the building," Starbuck said.

She said she will draw the outline of the sketches on the mural and then let members of the community paint the mural. Starbuck, along with the North Central Neighborhood Association, has organized a community painting day on April 26 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. She said it is open to everyone to come paint and she hopes that some of the original painters will want to come out and help finish what they started.

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