For the past five weeks, you could find Walter DuPriest, the Middle School Dean and art teacher, outside the teacher’s lounge on the way to the innovation lab working on his very own artwork, a large mosaic of 8” by 11” papers, sketched with colored pencils, but drawn over with ink and pen.

 According to DuPriest, this was only his second piece of artwork like this. Each piece conveys a chapter of life, depicting “moments of vulnerability, strength, loss, and renewal.” “There’s a whole life-death cycle. ” DuPriest says. He created this piece to represent the “fragility and shortness of existence”, using both abstract and figurative forms. His work shifted between “lightness and heaviness, softness and harshness, mirroring the unpredictable journey of living.”

This was not a regular project that took three days to complete; it spanned over two to three years and it turned into a reflection on the cycles of life, from birth to death. DuPriest says that his artwork requires much more space and time to work on it. “This is only one-third of the project at school and it is hard to find space where I can display the entire piece. It is a very big piece and most of it is at home and drags onto the floor because of its size, so all I really need is a wall where I can spread things out and make visual notes on what I need to do.”

With the sudden shift to virtual learning in 2020, the usual distractions of classroom life and the demands of daily routines as a Dean fell away. At home, in his quiet studio, he was granted free time away from work. As the world around him paused, DuPriest was able to work uninterrupted, channeling his thoughts into a new series of pieces that explored the profound themes of life and death. This period of solitude, though unsettling in many ways, offered him the rare opportunity to reflect on these concepts and express them through his art.

When schools eventually reopened and DuPriest was once again required to balance his responsibilities as both a Dean and a teacher, he found himself troubled. He was not sad to return to the classroom, since teaching was something he was passionate about, but the shift away from his studio was painful. The time spent in his studio had made it seem like a different home, a space where he could explore, question, and create without interruption. It wasn’t the comfort of home he missed, but the ability to be fully immersed in his art. The demands of a busy school schedule felt overwhelming. He had a hard time balancing the need to teach with the need to create, knowing both were important to who he was.

Although this piece will take two to three years to complete and most of the current Middle School students will have moved on to Upper School by then, DuPriest hopes they will have the opportunity to pass by and witness the finished masterpiece of his incredible artwork.