The Parking Lot’s New Look
August 15, 2019
I am by no means an artist, but taking the time over summer to paint my parking spot definitely made me feel like one. Even thought it was pretty insanely hot and expensive, at the end of the long process, I was left with a work of art I get to look at all year.
This is all because of Sahuaro’s new program where students purchased a parking spot and it would be theirs for the whole year. Last year students reserved the spot they wanted and at registration, they paid 20 dollars for a farther-away spot and 25 dollars for the closer ones. For more information on how students got their spots click here.
Every day after registration was over in the last weeks before the new year began, students could come and paint. “The heat was grueling. You couldn’t even sit on the ground, it was way too hot,” said Jacob Olson, a senior and co-creator of the Ms. Pac-Man spot. The other issue most students didn’t think about was the sand, trash and small rock covering the spots. Some of the other spots had large cracks through the middle of the concrete that was completely filled with dirt, making it difficult to paint. On my first day of painting, I spent almost the entire time sweeping the sand off. This was pretty disappointing since all the cute little inspiration pictures on Pinterest were done on concrete, unlike the rocky asphalt we have at Sahuaro. Other students aren’t happy with the steep prices for paint that they had to pay, since it had to be exterior latex paint which costs much more than spray paint. These rules were set because it will be easiest to cover, but the prices were higher than the students were expecting.
Even though there were unexpected problems, the overwhelming feeling of the artists was happy, happy to enjoy the murals for the rest of the year, happy to leave their mark on the school even temporarily.