Danielle Mullins is a 17-year-old North Bergen resident who recently completed her junior year at Immaculate Conception High School in Lodi. She has hopes and aspirations of becoming a fashion designer some day, and has a portfolio of dresses she has designed for proms.
“Since I was little, I’ve been known to draw and doodle on practically anything,” Mullins said. “I ruined school textbooks from drawing in them. I had trouble in other classes, like math, which was so boring, so I doodled and drew. I would turn the numbers in the textbooks into cartoon characters. Either that, or turn them into gowns. We ended up having to buy the textbooks. Mom thought it was funny, but Dad didn’t like it. They spent a lot of money in textbooks. But art is definitely my thing.”
Recently, Mullins was keeping herself busy with a practical purpose, designing the costumes for Immaculate Conception’s production of “Godspell.”
While the show was in the infant stages, a school official asked if someone was willing to do some decorations on a huge wall in the back of the school’s auditorium. Mullins suggested doing a complete mural on the 20-by-25 foot wall.
“I asked them to give me a chance, to let me show what I could do,” Mullins said. “So I sketched out a drawing and showed it to some people in the school. The teachers liked it and told me that I could do it.”
Mullins then started to think of a way to take her drawing – “It was easy. I did it while watching Conan O’Brien” – and transform it to the gigantic wall.
“I took the drawing and photocopied it,” Mullins said. “I then turned the drawing into a grid and broke it down to boxes. I then assigned people to work on different boxes. But it was all my designs.”
Mullins said that she had “three or four” people helping her at different times, but she did most of the work. “It took about two or three weeks,” Mullins said. “On the last night before the show, we slept over to get things done. I slept for only 12 minutes. I spent the whole night painting. I wanted to make everything perfect. I was so tired, I almost fell off the ladder. I had about seven cups of coffee, but I was determined to finish it and I wanted to make it pretty.”
After all the time and effort that went into designing, drawing and painting the mural, Mullins was pleased with the finished product.
“I am so happy with the way it turned out,” Mullins said. “I really am surprised that I’m the one who did it. It turned out better than I expected. After I was done, I needed a whole new wardrobe of clothes, because I had paint all over everything. It was all over my room. I put paint on the front seat of my brother’s car. I was scrubbing and scrubbing to get it out, but do you know how hard it is to get orange paint out of anything? It was not good.”
School officials were so thrilled with the way Mullins’ mural turned out that they decided to leave the wall alone and keep it as a permanent display in the back of the school’s auditorium. Mullins’ mural has also been entered in two statewide competitions, with judging to take place over the summer.
She’s well on her way to fulfilling her dreams as a fashion designer in the future. She hopes to pursue a career by attending the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York when she graduates from Immaculate Conception next year.
The mural depicts a bright yellow sun, the New York City skyline, and musical notes. “Godspell” is a lively musical based loosely on the gospel according to St. Matthew.
“I don’t think you can really tell it’s for ‘Godspell,’ so I hope that it’s there for a long time,” Mullins said. “It’s my first really big art project, so I’m really so proud of it and the way it turned out. I’m glad I was able to make everyone happy.”
Well, everyone except her brother with the orange-painted passenger seat.