With a light flick of his wrist and a delicate spray of paint from the bristles of his paintbrush, Jason Sanchez created a galaxy.

“That’s the Milky Way Galaxy,” he said, gesturing to the starry image developing on the black paint of his mural in a front hallway of Ramsey Magnet School of Science.

“You see how it’s turning blue? It’s because I watered down the white paint a whole bunch because these are the stars that are farthest back.”

This isn’t just any mural, and Sanchez isn’t just any artist.

Sanchez, a disabled Army veteran, walked the halls of the school 30 years ago when he was a Ramsey student. Now his own children are enrolled there.

And the solar system mural he’s painting is more than a piece of art – it’s educational, it’s hyper-realistic enough to look like a photograph and it’s Sanchez’s way of saying “thank you” to a school that means the world to him. More here. Devin Heilman, Cda Press