‘Mrs. Fab,’ young students brighten school with murals

Linda Fabrizius looked at the stark, white walls in Ponderosa Elementary’s gymnasium – an expanse of cinderblock – and saw a canvas for creativity.

Now Gumby-like children with wild hair and arms reaching to the sky dance on the walls of the gym, beneath trees bearing happy-colored fruit. The children have skin of red, yellow, pink, orange and brown. One has a multicolored, speckled face.

Fabrizius, an artist from Hayden, worked around chemotherapy sessions to help students from the Post Falls elementary create the 72-foot-long mural that now hangs in the school gymnasium. Several smaller, 8-foot murals dot the other walls in the gymnasium and the school cafeteria.

“She’s transformed the school,” Ponderosa principal Kathy Baker said Thursday, moments before recognizing the artist at a school awards assembly. “She’s just this very full-of-life spirit, and the kids just adore her.”

Baker said Fabrizius has brightened up the dreary gym, but the artist said she also has benefited. Fabrizius, who contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion 23 years ago, was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for the disease for the second time as she helped students with the mural project.

On days she was feeling low, Fabrizius said her “adoptive family” from Ponderosa was a source of support and good cheer. She has two children of her own, now in their 20s, and is looking forward to the day when she becomes a grandmother.

In the meantime, she has found hundreds of “grandkids” at Ponderosa. They call her “Mrs. Fab.”

Fabrizius first came to Ponderosa about seven years ago through a program called Art in the Schools. The program, sponsored by the Citizens Council for the Arts, paired professional artists with local schools.

“They stopped the program, but I loved the school,” said Fabrizius, who was also responsible for the mural project sprucing up the tunnel connecting Kootenai Medical Center with the North Idaho Cancer Center.

After the Art in the Schools program ended, Fabrizius continued volunteering at Ponderosa, teaching cartooning to students after school. In November, she began work on the mural project, which was designed by the students.

The students broke into groups of eight and worked together each Monday on individual panels and the grand mural above the bleachers in the gymnasium.

Each of the smaller murals illustrates a character trait. The large mural is topped with four words: integrity, responsibility, compassion and respect. Each of those words is the focus of four panels now hanging in the school cafeteria.

The individual panels hanging in the gym depict well-behaved Ponderosa Panthers, the school mascot. Panthers are pictured in a playground setting, sharing, playing together, working as a team and showing respect for one another.

Ponderosa’s PTO and the Post Falls Education Foundation provided funding for the project. Custodian Carol Boesch primed all of the boards used for the mural, even coming in on the weekends, Baker said.

Baker said Fabrizius donated more than 60 hours to brighten up the gymnasium. She even came in last weekend on her wedding anniversary to do some last-minute touch up.

Already, Fabrizius has a project in mind for the coming school year, spreading cheer to other areas of the school.

“They have some real tall hallways,” Fabrizius said. “We’re going to fill them.”