Angela Jones doesn’t think she can ever move from her dollhouse style home on College Street in Columbus. If she does, she said she would have to take her ceiling with her.
An art teacher at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, Jones painted her ceiling to mimic the style of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
She was inspired to attempt the 12-by-12-foot ceiling mural after visiting the Sistine Chapel and seeing Michelangelo’s work in 2000. Fifteen years later, she decided to test her skill and began painting her den’s ceiling. The final product reflects images of heaven in brilliant sunrays, cherubs and three flying doves that represent the Holy Trinity.
She describes the artwork as a portrayal of heaven and earth. Heaven is shown toward the center of the room, with angels and golden light, and the earth toward the edges, represented by darker clouds with no doves or cherubs. In the center of the ceiling hangs a chandelier, illuminating the heavenly scene.
The work now behind her, she takes as many opportunities as possible to enjoy it, often sitting under the scene with her morning coffee and listening to classical music.
“I was trying to get it to give that feeling that you’re looking up into heaven,” she said. “…It’s my favorite room in the house. I go every day, to think, to pray. I do everything in that room.”
How it came together
Jones, a West Point native who has taught for 25 years at MSMS, completed the ceiling project through the summer of 2015, spending hours each day bringing the mural to fruition.
She climbed onto scaffolding just wide enough to kneel on, she said, her face inches away from her den’s ceiling. Jones added to the challenge by painting without covering the furniture sitting under her workspace.
“Every day, I looked forward to getting in there and seeing how much I could accomplish,” she said. “I usually would start at 10 in the morning, have lunch at 3 and then (later) realize it was dark. The days flew by. Sometimes I would use a floodlight but ran into the problems of shadows from my body.”
Though Jones painted the mural alone, she didn’t complete it entirely without assistance.
A graduate from the Mississippi University of Women with a bachelor’s degree in commercial art and a master’s in gifted studies, Jones solicited advice from one of her former art instructors, Larry Feeney, in perfecting her creation. His insight led Jones to bring more depth into the painting by using darker colors around the clouds lining the edges of the ceiling.
“Every artist needs help, and I’m passing on my teachers’ techniques to my students,” Jones said.
Jones admits the process caused aches in her knees, and she improvised by setting a folding chair on the scaffolding so she could work comfortably.
She used acrylic paint to make the mural, and only used one paintbrush for all of the large clouds, “brushing it into a stump” by the time she finished.
“The perspective that you get from up there, and then down below, is a totally different look,” Jones said. “You can’t see the whole ceiling at all when you’re up there, so you have to get down to see what you’ve done.
“When I stand back, I can’t believe I actually did it,” she added. “I finally completed it. It’s something I always wanted to do, and it was all the sudden there.”
Jones feared, at times, she may not finish the project, admitting it was a little overwhelming to start such a large vision with one small brush stroke in one tiny space on a ceiling. But as she moved the scaffolding across the floor to paint each section, her confidence grew.
“I’m proud of it,” she said. “It makes it more my house. I just feel like a part of me is in that room. It’s something that I will leave behind, and hopefully the next people will enjoy it like I have.”
Impact and inspiration
Beyond creating serenity in her home, Jones hopes she can use her experience creating the mural to better inspire her students.
Those students, along with her faith and family, have certainly inspired her, she said.
“It’s important to try things and not be scared,” she tells her students. “The more you do them, the better they’ll be.”
Her “Sistine Chapel” attracted Jones’ students’ admiration, as well, when she recently took a group on a field trip to see the ceiling.
“It was beautiful, the kind of thing I’d want in my bedroom,” said senior Daniela Corona.
Other art students at MSMS claim to enjoy Jones’ teaching, as well as her artwork. They describe her as patient and encouraging, someone who always makes them feel talented.
“She doesn’t just teach art, she teaches how to be an artist,” another senior, Dustin Dunaway, said. “And her passion for art shows in her dedication to students,”
Jones’ mural was far from her final work. She often donates her artwork to charity auctions and fundraising events for the West Point-Clay County Animal Shelter.
Given her passion for art, she joked, she might even die with a paintbrush in her hand. The way Jones sees it, she could do worse.
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