Fletcher-Maynard Academy
225 Windsor Street

Artist: Judith Inglese
Title: Play is Children's Work
Date: 1983
Material: Ceramic
Dimensions: 7' 2" x 10' 11"
Location: Second floor hallway

In Judith Inglese's ceramic mural, rendered in the artist's signature stained glass-like style, children from a range of racial and cultural backgrounds play in small groups or alone. They kick soccer balls, shoot basketballs, collect starfish, cuddle a cat, create chalk drawings on the street, or simply interact with one another. The tree that stretches across the scene hints at the work's simple yet powerful main message: children "branch out" when they play. They learn about their environment, themselves, and others. They grow and develop. In the words of the title, "play is children's work."

A Massachusetts resident, Inglese studied at Sarah Lawrence College, at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has received several grants for community-based art workshops in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico. Her other public works include a 40-foot ceramic mural at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and pieces for numerous schools, recreational facilities, hospitals, transportation centers, libraries, and housing for the elderly.

Artist: Arnold Hurley
Title: Project Adventure
Date: 1983
Material: Acrylic on masonite
Dimensions: Two panels, 4' x 8' each
Location: Second floor hallway

The mission of the Project Adventure program was to build self-confidence and trust in young students through a series of physical challenges. As shown in Hurley's two paintings, the children must rely on their peers for help and support as they undertake such activites as scaling a wall, climbing a rope, and balancing on wooden beams.

Hurley studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and education at Boston University, before receiving a B.S. and M.F.A. from Tufts University. He has exhibited widely throughout New England and the South, and has taught at Northeastern University and Emerson College.

Artists: Jack Gregory and Joan Wye
Title: Children's Collaborative Mural
Date: 1983
Material: Ceramic Tile
Dimensions: 3'8" x 17'10" x 3/8"
Location: Second floor

Humor and bold color distinguish this two-part mural designed by Jack Gregory and Joan Wye. Resembling a huge patchwork quilt, the mural's main component is tilework made from students' drawings. The children's airplanes, motorcycles, ships, birds, sea creatures, rabbits, and dinosaurs combine with small squares of embedded shapes, numbers and letters. Also in the mix: ceramic "samplers" offering assorted bits of familiar childhood advice ("brush your teeth," "say thank you," "eat your spinach") and nonsense phrases ("liver and onions," cats and dogs," "honk if you love noise"). Background colors unify the diverse elements, while a band running along the bottom lists the student artists' first names.

Gregory and Wye have collaborated on numerous public artworks around New England. Gregory is a graduate and former teacher in the graphic design department of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Wye began her career as a painter, studying in the art students league in New York. Later, while living in Provincetown, she began creating sculpture in bronze and wood. She founded Belfast Bay Tilework in 1974, and in 1976 Gregory joined her as a partner.

Commissioned through the Cambridge Arts Council's Public Art Program. Funded in part by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Block Grant