Eastern Shore art teacher livens up Crisfield with colorful murals

On first meeting with Robin Daniels, it's clear her love for art is strong. 

The art teacher at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Crisfield wears a smock splattered with bright paint colors. She looks right at home in her brightly decorated classroom and her face lights up when she begins discussing how artwork can liven up an area. 

Daniels became a painter about 20 years ago after her first college painting class, and hasn't stopped since. Almost a decade ago, she brought murals to the walls of Woodson Elementary, and now is brightening up Crisfield with murals around the city she completed during the summer. 

“I could paint every wall. I just enjoy seeing people’s reactions," she said. 

These reactions include her own as painting is her true passion. The artist graduated from University of Maryland Eastern Shore in 2000 and found arts education as a happy medium between working in her passion and paying the bills. 

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She later went on to receive her master's degree in arts education from Boston University.  

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Daniels loves teaching elementary students because of their creative spark. She said she can give her students anything to work on and something comes out of it. Her own elementary-aged children, Emory and Elijah, keep her inspired as well. 

Daniels describes her artistic style as realism, eclectic and bright. Creating large works of art is where she thrives, she said.

“That is my passion, painting murals in large areas," she said. 

The Woodson Elementary murals were inspired by Crisfield, with one half of the school's art pieces called the "bayside" and the other half called the "ocean side," Daniels said. The murals each include a street name like "Shark Street" or "Shrimp Point." 

Daniels said the goal was to brighten up the school's neutral-colored walls and help aid students when walking from hallway to hallway. Following fun street signs and colorful murals made each hallway distinct, helping children not get lost in an abyss of identical walls and corners. 

The fun designs like a shark with sunglasses or a parrot with a crashing wave brought some creativity to the school. 

“It made it look like an elementary school," she explained. 

The murals painted around Crisfield sprang from a variety of different projects. Two pieces were commissioned by the Greater Crisfield Action Coalition and Jay Tawes. Daniels said she presented three different designs to the coalition to replace an original art piece of a rainbow wall. 

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The coalition commissioned a mural of colorful buoys, while Tawes commissioned a mural of rainbow crabs. Both are on Main Street and brighten the area of the city known as "uptown," a vision Crisfield has had since 2007, said Charlotte Scott, coalition president. 

"We love the work that she did," Scott said. 

Scott explains Daniels' murals added momentum with the sparks of color livening uptown. In about the last six months, the coalition has also been discussing the possible creation of an arts and entertainment district. 

While the murals were separate from this, Scott explains they complement the arts and entertainment district plans. 

Other murals Daniels completed around Crisfield include a mural on the Pink Palace on W. Main Street and another on the front of The Crab Place on Maryland Avenue. The mural on the Pink Palace was completed with Crisfield's "It Takes a Village to Help Our Children" after-school program and funded by the Somerset County Arts Council. 

In collaboration with a Somerset County Arts Council-sponsored summer program, Daniels also completed a mural for the WBYC 107.3 Crisfield Community Radio station on a concrete wall next to the building. 

Daniels said the children in the summer program created their own musical designs, which she took and formed into a mural design. Now, when the children go look at the mural, they can see their exact designs on the wall. 

“For them to see their artworks look exactly like what they drew, they were so excited to see that," she said. 

Looking forward, Daniels said she'd love to do more murals around Crisfield. With it being her hometown, she's passionate about bringing color to public spaces and showing that in rural places like Crisfield, artwork is possible. 

“That’s why doing these murals has been such a big thing for me is because this is my hometown," Daniels explained. 

For the GCAC, Scott said while a few murals uptown may seem small, it's one step that gets Crisfield closer to its revitalization goals. 

"It's a big deal on a small scale," she said. 

On Twitter: @The_MegRyan