Seven students at Saint Mary’s School in Henrico County are spreading a message of hope through their art.
Photo by Birdie Oleniacz
As part of their after-school activities, the children in Birdie Oleniacz’s Curious Creators program conceived and painted a mural now on view in South Richmond. “Everything you see is their work,” Oleniacz says. “It’s their decisions, it’s their images of hope, and it’s their painting. That was really important to me.”
The Catholic school project grew out of the late Pope Francis’ 2025 Jubilee message of hope, according to Principal Amanda Esparza. The elementary-age students, who represent a variety of faiths, were first directed to depict what hope means to them. Many of their images included the sun, flowers and people exhibiting strength, Oleniacz recalls, while one student drew a chameleon in a tree. These elements were then distilled into a single whiteboard sketch, and the students painted the mural on plywood over six afternoons during the program’s final three weeks.
Meanwhile, staff from the Richmond Grows Gardens program of the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities helped find the project a home: Fonticello Food Forest, a community resource hub and garden in Fonticello Park. The mural was installed in April. Oleniacz and other adults cleared brush to help prepare the area.
“This piece of art that the students made about hope is installed in a new area of our garden that we’ve decided to turn into a memorial garden,” Food Forest co-founder Laney Sullivan says. “We have a swinging bench up there, [and] we’re going to be putting plaques honoring different community members that have passed. It’s a really lovely piece of art at the entrance to this memorial space that hopefully people can look at and feel that sense of levity and hope that children bring.”
The mural also allowed students to approach art differently, Oleniacz says. “I think that the biggest takeaway for them was that this is something bigger than just themselves, and being a part of a team can be very valuable to make awesome things happen.”
