FREEHOLD — Local artist Leslie Daley will be remembered by more people than just her art students at the Park Avenue School and the Freehold Inter-mediate School — she’ll be remembered by residents of the town she’s helped to immortalize on canvas.
JERRY WOLKOWITZ Freehold Intermediate School art teacher Leslie Daley looks at the painting of past and present Freehold Borough schools that she created for the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation. The painting is hanging in the Park Avenue Elementary School.
A native of Freehold,Old Freehold schools live
in art teacher’s painting
By Clare Marie celano
Staff Writer Daley was recently commissioned by the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation to create a painting that would honor the contributors of the foundation’s charter donor campaign.
What could be a more fitting gift for members of the foundation than to memorialize the schools Daley has taught in for 30 years and attended as well?
The painting, which now hangs in the lobby of the Park Avenue School, is a watercolor and pen-and-ink work that took Daley four months to complete. It depicts all of the elementary schools that have been a part of the borough’s history.
In a symmetrical collage of finely detailed designs, the town’s schools, past and present, now crafted in color and design, are a tangible display of borough history. Below the painting are the names of the charter members who helped to make the educational foundation a reality.
Daley said she was honored and considered it a wonderful privilege to have been asked to do the painting, stating that she felt she would now be a part of the history of the borough.
The artist’s rendering of the six schools is a composite depicting the town’s educational history. Daley has immortalized the six buildings as they either once were or as they remain today.
Featured are the Court Street School, pictured as it stands today, a one-story red brick building that is now used as an educational community center; the Bennett Street School, the red brick building with architectural detail denoting its time in history, now used as the town’s police headquarters; and the Hudson Street School, pictured in golden brick. In its place now stands the Hudson Manor senior citizens residence.
The one-story brick Broad Street School, no longer used as a school but still bears its original structure, is also featured. Pine trees and large maple shade trees are scattered about, depicting the lovely landscape of the town as it was then and as it remains today. The newer schools, the Freehold Learning Center, with its crescent archways and brown-and-white design, and the one-story, red-brick Park Avenue and Freehold Intermediate schools, join the heritage of the older schools, blending to make the painting both a historically correct and finely crafted watercolor rendering that will be a legacy to the educational character of the town it has immortalized.
Daley, who has been teaching in the borough school district since 1973, started out teaching elementary school, something she said she always wanted to do. She began her career teaching at the Court Street School, a fact she said pleased her very much.
"To be able to teach at a school I had attended as a child was wonderful," Daley said. "Teaching at the Court Street School, which was really much like a one-room school, was like a dream."
Daley was only able to enjoy that dream for about a year before the Court Street School closed and she moved to the new Freehold Learning Center on Dutch Lane Road. Although the design of the new school was vastly different from the old school she had just left, Daley said she was excited by the move and the concept of a school with an open-space design.
The teacher said that although she always wanted to become an elementary school teacher, it wasn’t until the art teacher in the district prepared to retire that Daley gave some thought to actually teaching something that had always been a passion in her life.
Born of parents who both practiced and welcomed art in their lives, Daley said she had art around her most of the time. A painter of murals and many other forms of artistic work, Daley has done commissioned pieces primarily for friends and family.
She followed her heart and has been teaching students how to include art in their lives ever since 1987. Daley said she initially taught art to borough students in all grades until the enrollment in-creased so much that the district needed to hire another art teacher. Since then she’s been teaching art to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders ex-clusively, including a special art class for gifted and talented students, a program she holds dear to her heart.
Children in that program must qualify for admission by means of a specific set of criteria. Part of her program is to include her students in community art. For Daley’s gifted and talented students, walls and windows are no longer inanimate structures, they are empty canvases with potential for magic transformation. Her pupils paint designs for holidays and specific occasions to brighten up the borough.
According to Ken Kalmis, chairman of the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation, Daley’s painting of the schools was reproduced, and limited editions were signed by the artist and presented to the charter donors at a reception held for them at Marielle’s restaurant.
"There are not enough adjectives to describe how pleased we are with Leslie’s painting. It’s absolutely spectacular," Kalmis said.
Board of Education Secretary-Business Administrator Anthony Tonzini said Daley’s project was overwhelmingly supported and appreciated.
"Everyone loved it," he said. "In fact, we’re getting many requests from people who want to have a reproduction of their own. The painting is very much in demand."
Tonzini said that in addition to her artistic ability and expertise, Daley was asked to do the painting because of her history with the school district and the town.