Volunteer Mural Work at The Watuppa Rowing Center in Fall River

Designed and Created by: Mj Manville Cloutier

Outside Wall- 2021

Inside Donor Wall- 2022

Outside
Corner Wall,
and Completion of all Outside Wall Design- 2023

Addition of Original
Wave Design,
and Paddles

Volunteering at The Watuppa Rowing Center

In late summer of 2021, because their newly painted building needed some visible signage, I volunteered to paint murals onto the front of the Watuppa Rowing Center in Fall River, Massachusetts.

The Rowing Center, located on the Watuppa Lake, is a non-profit organization which teaches rowing skills to school age children, in the Fall River area, free of charge. One of the main goals of the organization is to provide their students with the skills needed to apply for crew scholarships when they enter college.

Over the course of about 26 hours, I painted the organizations name and logo on the corner walls, then I proceeded to paint a boat (which had been moved to the front of the building as a decoration).

On the boat, I painted the words "Place of Boats", as that is the English translation of the Native American word, "Watuppa". I finished by painting two original murals onto the boat. The first mural shows a group of students rowing while the second mural depicts an individual, silhouetted rower.

See The Video Here

From ordinary blank walls...to a unique, original building front!

Before

After

Originally, the outside of the building consisted of plain, painted, cement block walls, and there was no visible signage at all. I created the signage by projecting the images of their name and logo, onto the walls. I then traced it out as best as I could.

The next few visits, I added the paint to the wall design, before creating the artwork on the boat display.

Designing and Creating a Donor Wall -2022

The Watuppa Rowing Center was in need of a Donor Wall to honor those who had made large donations to the nonprofit organization.

First, I designed a fun wave look, for the entire inside wall, painted in the Watuppa Rowing Center's colors of yellow, blue and purple. I then created the "WRC" lettering in the center of the wall, using a ruler and pencil, before painting.

I had drawn a template for boats and oar blades of several sizes to be created out of wood. After much painting of the wall and wooden cutouts, "Cricut" lettering was applied to all of the boats and oar blades, which were then attached to the wall.

After about 30 hours of volunteer work, our donor wall was complete!