Talent goes to school
CENTER TWP — Art comes in many forms and shows up in unlikely places.
For Jim Green of Butler Township, his muse has moved him to work in the medium of whiteboard and dry-erase markers. And his patrons are a group of appreciative but demanding kindergartners through fourth-graders at Center Township Elementary School, located at 950 Mercer Road.
Green is a school policeman at Center Township, after having served as a Pennsylvania state trooper at the Butler barracks for 25 years.
“I retired in 2016,” Green said. “I was like everybody; when it was time to retire, I retired and went over and worked for the school.”
Green is on duty at the school from 7:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., putting people through metal detectors, being on the lookout for dangers to the students and staff and trying to form good relationships with the children.
One of Green's tasks is to monitor the parents' drop-off zone at the main entrance of the school.
Last year at the beginning of the school year, Green said he brought a whiteboard to the area.
“I decided to write cool inspirational things on it — 'Smile, it's Monday' — stuff like that,” Green said. “Then I started to make little drawings with the sayings.”
His drawings became a hit with the students and their parents. Parents even began taking pictures of them.
Then he started getting requests.
“I got a lot of 'Frozen' Disney requests,” Green said. “I would do whatever they asked, and it's just continued to this.” He adds the name of the student who requested the picture when he's done.
Now, Green fills a whiteboard with one of his drawings, wheels it outside to the drop-off area and then brings it in to the school's lobby so that the students can see it throughout the day.
Principal Theresa Cherry said it's not just students who make picture requests, teachers and staff also want to see favorite cartoon characters.Assistant Principal Chad Broman said Green's work is popular with the school's nearly 550 students and 45 teachers and support staff.Using dry-erase markers, Green takes anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours to make a picture.“It depends, sometimes they go quick,” Green said. “I've taken whiteboards home over the weekend and spent three hours on a picture.”His subjects vary from Disney characters and the Mario Brothers to unexpected requests.Green said, “The funniest one I did, I was helping out with lunch, and this first-grade girl wanted me to do the 'Mona Lisa.'“I said, 'How do you even know what the 'Mona Lisa' is?'”He was using two whiteboards to hold his pictures, leaving them up for a week in the school lobby before erasing them and drawing something new.That's not bad for a man who admits his last art class was in junior high and who needs to use references for drawing his pictures.“I can't do this from imagination or memory,” Green said.He said his wife, Amy, buys him dry-erase markers from Amazon because when he's doing a large one-color background, such as the blue sky behind his North Pole drawing, the markers tend to get used up quickly.And Amazon has a wide variety of colors because his young critics are quick to pounce if the colors aren't just right.“If they like it, they will tell you, but they will let you know when something's wrong, too,” he said.And his canvas, as it were, is getting larger. He recently found a third, large whiteboard in a storage room that he has used to draw the Charlie Brown gang at Christmastime.Of course, the audience for his work has been a lot smaller lately.Broman said most of Center Township's students have been remote learning this fall.“I still continue to do it,” Green said. “We had five classes of emotional support and learning support students meeting at the school.”He added that teachers working with their students remotely will still start their classes with a shot of his latest artwork.Of course, there are no classes of any type right now because the school district started Christmas break Dec. 18, and students will be out until Jan. 4.“I'm leaving the Peanuts thing up until, hopefully, the kids come back that Monday,” he said.Then, he has a lot of commissions that students want.He's been asked to create Anna from “Frozen” and Yukon Cornelius from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” He'll definitely be drawing Anna because she's fits in with the winter season, but time may have passed for Yukon until next Christmas.Cherry said, “He will not be able to stop himself. I'm looking forward to what he will do.”Broman said, “Mr. Green is one of those guys who's in this to make a difference in a kid's life, and he's using his talent to do that.”
