murals
In 1999 Pearl launched on an ambitious project of creating a 12 foot high by 40 foot long mural to grace the side of the Won Yuen Store in Naalehu, Hawaii. Her husband, Jay, built a large easel in their greenhouse that held four 4x8 foot sheets of plywood at a time. By moving them around and adding new sheets the mural came together. After completion of all 15 sheets and the ad-on steeple, a scaffolding was attached to the old uneven building to hold the mural. The mural features the former Waihinu Church as well as Mark Twain's visits to the area. The Won Yuen Store and gas station, being the only business in town, made the mural a well known visitor attraction, as it still is to this day.
The Powers Oregon Library Mural Project
Pearl Maxner, while teaching art at the Powers, Oregon Elementary and Middle School, designed and headed up a summer mural project on the Power’s Library. The mural is a depiction of the Flora and Fauna of the Siskiyou National Forest. Students in the Jr High art classes at Power’s High School did the prep work on the wall before school was out in the spring. They washed the wall and then a week later they painted the background green color that would house the bulk of the mural. The end of June, Pearl Maxner held a two week Summer School Mural Class for students aged 9-18.
The class included computer research of individual animals and then learning how to draw them, a guided walk with John Lowe, Wildlife Biologist with the National Forest Service, a video on the owls of the area, and technical hands-on with the process of gridding the wall surface to be painted, as well as the pictures that were drawn. The students then started drawing their pictures on the wall and painted them.
These are portraits of some of the actual goats the artist and her husband have raised over the years.