A large crowd celebrated in West Hartford Monday at the unveiling of a mural spotlighting Connecticut’s deaf, deaf and blind, and hard of hearing communities.
Three stories tall, the spray-painted art by Michael Rice graces the outdoor walls of Noah Webster Library facing Blue Back Square. It features the deaf luminary Laurent Clerc who immigrated to the U.S. from France, and later co-foundered the American School for the Deaf in 1817. Clerc shares the space in the mural with children using a range of communication means including American Sign Language, hearing aids, and cochlear implants, and features a portrait of a deaf blind community member communicating through tactile ASL.
“Whenever you have the opportunity to celebrate a community and shed light on them, it’s something I’m interested in,” said Rice, who described the power of public art in promoting public health by mitigating isolation and loneliness among individuals and communities.
“The people who helped make this project happen were so passionate. It was all volunteer-driven,” he said.
The project was created by the West Hartford Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services at West Hartford Public Schools. The team leaned into art, history and education to create a space where the community felt seen and included, said Luke Nowakowski-McDonald, teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing.
“It takes a village,” Nowakowski-McDonald said at the gathering. “I’m privileged to watch my students navigate the world. They are trailblazers.”
Another teacher in West Hartford, who was not involved with the mural’s creation but had come to celebrate, said she felt proud that her deaf and hard of hearing students were being seen and noticed.
“It makes me feel really happy for them,” said Mary Nadeau.
The scene was one of joy. In the crowd was seven-year-old Sören Allen, a student at Charter Oak Academy, a magnet school with classrooms for children like him who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Allen was one among the many children who helped to create the mural.
“What I did is like, I took the leftover cans, so like, filled them up with more paint,” he said.
Eight-year-old Jonathan Dunlap, Allen’s friend, had a cochlear implant and it was his idea to paint a boy in the mural showing in ASL the word “love,” he said.
Allen and Dunlap stopped playing for a few minutes to talk, and both showed the sign for love – thumb, pointer, and pinkie extended, and the middle two fingers tucked in.
“I think this mural is very important because it represents the deaf culture of Connecticut and the United States of America,” Dunlap said.
