Over Riordan’s spring break, the Art Club painted a marine-themed mural outside of a kindergarten classroom at West Portal Elementary School.

Sara Fu has been teaching kindergarten at West Portal for 10 years, and every day of those 10 years, she has been faced with a beige wall just outside her classroom door.

When she was class president in her high school in Sacramento, she left a mural behind that she visits from time to time.

Wanting to do something similar for her students, she reached out to Irman Arcibal, the father of one of her students and the art instructor at Riordan.

Co-presidents of the art club, Benjamin Reyes ’26 and Sofia Pena ’26, wanted something that each child could participate in.

They contemplated a tree design, but settled on the ocean as it has a wide variety of animals.

Pena said, “This is the biggest [project] we’ve done…the first time were really outside doing a big project.”

Members of the art club laid a turquoise background and outlined turtles, fish, jellyfish, seaweed, coral, and an octopus.

Five Riordan students worked on the mural.

One kindergartner who walked by while the outlines were being drawn exclaimed, “What is this? Ooh la la!”

The kindergartners were then brought out to fill in the rest of the mural.

The final detail consisted of each of the 22 students placing their hand print on one of the marine animals.

Arcibal explained, “The plan was to collaborate with the students in the class so that when they end this year, and then go into the next grade, that they’ll have something here that they know they contributed to.”

The school is undergoing larger renovations, and plans for more art to be added are in the works, according to Fu.

She said, “I love art… I believe students should have a lot of involvement in making their community and their space beautiful and a place they want to be.”