Local artist Stefan Wilson encourages student creativity

WASILLA — Most young individuals don’t grow up wanting to be a school custodian, but for visual artist Stefan Wilson, the job gives him the time to do what he loves best: create art.

Though Wilson’s “day job” — which is actually a night job — begins when school ends for Larson Elementary School students, “everyone pretty much knows” who he is, he said. He’s the guy who painted the mural on the wall.

Wilson also occasionally draws on the whiteboards for students and teachers to see in the morning, giving them a glimpse into the life of the (real) person who cleans their classrooms.

Fourth-grade teacher Emily Callaway, who used to teach fifth grade, spoke highly of Wilson’s work. She was able to watch the artist in action with the older students firsthand in the last couple years.

“Stefan’s always going above and beyond to like, share his artwork with everybody,” she said. “I mean, he could just be reclusive and not get involved with the kids, but he’s always available.”

Wilson has hosted a two-hour class for fifth-graders each year for the past three years, teaching them a variety of drawing skills during the day.

“He has so many ideas to be able to reach out to kids and help them learn about art,” Callaway said.

That’s how the mural came about, too. (It was just completed with the final varnish this weekend.) Wilson said he approached Larson’s administration with the idea a few months after he began working at the school, and they were all for it.

Now, a previously blank slate of wall above one of the stairwells in the school is covered with Wilson’s art, a semi-surrealistic scene of popular Disney characters — Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc., Anna from Frozen, and Carl and Russell from Up — interwoven with the word “read” in large capital letters.

“I wanted it to be street art-ish but totally readable,” Wilson said.

The mural has another function beyond adding color to Larson’s walls, however. Much like the goal of the American Library Association’s Celebrity READ Campaign, Wilson’s mural associates famous (fictitious) people with reading to encourage students to engage in an important, educational and enjoyable activity.

“Maybe kids’ll realize that they can read about those characters in a book just as well as (see them) in a movie,” he said.

But Wilson’s commissioned projects, like the school mural, are different from his personal work. While he maintains a similar style of surreal animation throughout, Wilson said his biggest inspiration comes from music.

“It may sound cliché, but without music, life would be so boring,” he said.

Having grown up in the 1980s, informed by punk rock and the skateboarding culture, Wilson tends to paint abstract, thought-provoking pieces.

“My art is different enough that it always leaves you wondering,” he said.

It also stands in stark contrast to his father’s artistic work, which illustrates more concrete, Alaskan scenes.

“I’m not into the typical landscape and wildlife painting,” Wilson said. “That’s not the way I express myself.”

That’s not to say he isn’t inspired by nature and the work his father and other Alaskan artists do, however. On his website, Wilson writes of how his dad helped him learn “to appreciate that nature speaks volumes to those who listen. And that artistic expression is really a way of life that weaves its way into everything we do.”

Wilson also recognizes that to neglect the place in which he lives could actually be a detriment to his work.

“As an Alaskan resident for the past twenty years, I can’t help but pull subtle elements from my icy surroundings. These both contribute to the ever-evolving imaginative process and fuel my appreciation for the natural world,” his online biography reads.

And that imaginative process, whether it comes through painting, drawing, songwriting, acting or any other artistic endeavor, is something Wilson hopes children will hold onto throughout their lives. Positively influencing them to do just that — “create their own thing, anything that’s beyond the basics of education” — is, in fact, one of his goals.

Beyond creating, though, it’s important to be an active and thoughtful viewer of art, too.

“(Interpretation) belongs to the viewer, and they might relate something in the their life to something they see that no one else would get,” Wilson said.

Even viewing the artist and a snapshot of their daily life, perhaps, can change a person’s way of thinking.

“No matter what job you have, you might have other activities and be amazing at them. It’s not like your job describes exactly who you are,” Callaway said.

Wilson agreed that this is a good lesson for students to learn at a young age.

“They should know that their job is not all there is to their life, it might be just kind of a sideline to what (they) really wanna do,” he said.

Wilson also designed the Anchorage Hard Rock Café’s official t-shirt last year, and hopes to “do a few more things locally.”

To see samples of Stefan Wilson’s work, visit stefanwilsonart.com or facebook.com/stefanwilsonak5.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.