TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
A new sensory room being created at Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill now features a giant handpainted mural depicting rural farm life in Wisconsin. “We went with a farm theme, because so many residents have some sort of experience or history in farming, and it’s a wonderful subject to reminisce on,” said Brianna VandenHeuvel, CTRS, Life Enrichment Supervisor at Pine Crest. “The mural is colorful, detailed, and covers the entire wall! We love that residents can get right up to it to feel it and see the details.”
VandenHeuvel had a friend, Kay Schlimn, who is an artist. “I’ve been friends with her for over 20 years and asked her to take on the project,” VandenHeuvel said. “She has a lot of experience with farm scenes and grew up around farms, helping her family, and showed cows at the fair. I gave her a very vague vision and she ran with it!”
It took the artist 64 hours to complete the mural.
“We’ve done a little shuffling of rooms here and moved the sensory room to the north side of the building,” VandenHeuvel said. “Especially because we aren’t able to do sensory group activities, we wanted to take the opportunity to make it special, stimulating, and fun!”
“We’ve had this project in the back of our heads for a couple years now, even before the pandemic. As donations have come into the Activity Department since then, we’ve asked families if they would be ok with us putting the donations towards the mural,” she said.
As a result, the project was almost completely paid for from donations. “It cost just over $1,000, and we were only $43 short when all the donations were added up,” VandenHeuvel said. [The Pine Crest Life Enrichment Budget covered the last $43.]
“We’d like to send an especially big thank you to the family of Ramona Burrows, family of Lila Schleif, and Pine Crest Friends,” she said.
“In special memory of Lila and Ramona, we have their initials ‘carved’ in hearts in the tree of the mural. We put their initials in the tree because their families donated funds after their passing. Ramona actually retired from the Activity Department at Pine Crest,” VandenHeuvel said. She was very active when she worked at the Nursing Home. “And farming was a huge piece of Lila’s life, my grandma actually, and she was in the sensory program.”
VandenHeuvel said the sensory room isn’t completely finished yet. They still need to get plaid curtains and more sensory equipment.
“We are very excited to get our sensory programming going again,” VandenHeuvel added. “We know the residents are going to have many walks down memory lane for years to come!”
To learn more about the artist who painted the mural, go to: https://www.kayschultzartistry.com.
