SCHENECTADY-- The paint brush in Claude Seward's hand glided gently over the cheek of a young boy, applying flesh tone to the wall mural, one stroke at a time.
Sitting on a wood-plank scaffold, Seward tried to concentrate on the task before him, and shut out the sounds on children playing on the gym floor 15 feet below.
In the more than three years he has been creating a mural in the gymnasium at State Street Presbyterian Church, Seward has adapted to the shrieks of laughter and rattle of metal grates that occasionally fill room.
"What are you going to do?" Seward said. "You live with it. They're just little kids. I have five kids of my own. I'm accepting of their foibles."
The at-risk youth attend a weekday program at the church run by the Northeast Parent and Child Society. The gym is a place for eating lunch and exercising muscles and lungs.
The children have grown accustomed to the paint-splattered scaffold pushed against a wall, and the artist perched above with his brushes, bottles of paint, paper cups and other supplies.
All around are the fruits of Seward's labor, a panorama of lush greens, brilliant reds, misty blues and sparkling yellows.
Statue-sized depictions of the apostles John, Luke, Mark and Matthew hold forth on one wall. Trees, birds, arched columns and a water fountain grace another.
Scenes evoking Schenectady's skyline-- The Nott Memorial, City Hall, First Presbyterian and St. John the Evangelist churches-- anchor the third wall, the one presently occupying Seward's attention as he nears completion.
"The east wall I treated as the sunrise wall," Seward, 66, explained. "The south as mid-morning, the north as mid-afternoon and the west as sunset. So, we can legitimately say we invite people to stay the whole day no matter how long they stay in the cloister."
Cloisters-- a covered walkway or arched path meant for solitude and reflection-- are often found inside monasteries. That's the image that came to mind when Seward began thinking about the mural several years ago.
Seward first came to the church in 1994 when his friend, Helen Dejnozka, the then organist, asked for his advice on how best to remove the layers of green paint from the sanctuary walls.
A muralist and retired art professor living at the time in the Saratoga County hamlet of Rock City Falls, Seward had extensive knowledge of paints and colors. He soon took charge of the sanctuary restoration-- overseeing the selection of colors and creating stencils to match the patterns of the stained glass windows.
"Claude just took over," marveled the Rev. Robert Smith. "What a gift."
With the help of volunteers, including prisoners from Mount McGregor in Wilton, in three months the sanctuary was transformed from a drab room to a spectacular house of worship that closely mirrors the original appearance of 1896.
The improvement lifted the spirits of the congregation, whose membership had dwindled since the days of peak General Electric employment in Schenectady a half-century ago, Smith said.
After finishing the sanctuary restoration, Seward and Smith talked about the gym, a place that once hosted packed basketball games and church tournaments.
Seward then left on a trip to Egypt.
"I thought this place has a lot potential for community outreach, but I'm not sure the focus of outreach is basketball," said Smith, who has been pastor for 10 years.
"There's got to be a dozen basketball courts in the city," Smith remembers thinking. "Why do we have to maintain a pink gym with no windows?"
Seward asked Smith to take pictures of the 23-foot high gym walls and mail them to him in Egypt. There, he sketched out the scenes of the cloister on paper.
He returned to the United States, and on October 31, 1996, he and Smith started the arduous process of sealing over the cement block walls with a bonding material.
Bit by bit, Seward began painting the mural. The paints and all the other supplies have been payed for by an annonymous church donor, and Seward has done his work for free.
Now divorced, he lives in Niskayuna.
Nearly every day for the past three-plus years, Seward has arrived at the gymnasium in the late morning and remained until early evening, painstakingly bringing his vision to life.
Smith wants to use the gym for banquets, entertainment and gatherings-- a better way to unite the people who live in the surrounding Vale neighborhood.
In addition to the mural, the room will be spruced up thanks to a curtain being made for the stage. The combination auditorium/gym hasn't had curtains since it was built in 1956. Smith also hopes to raise money to replace the flourescent lights.
The mural has been a therapy of sorts for Seward, who underwent an operation in the early 1970's to remove a blood clot from his brain and had to learn to speak again. He appears fully recovered, though he says his speech isn't as fluid as he would like it to be.
Seward hopes to finish the mural by March, but isn't faced with any deadlines. He takes his time, examining the scene before him, dabbing his brush in a plastic container top that serves as a makeshift palette.
"The problem is always with this paint that it dries darker in value, and you never know definately what color you've got." he said during a pause in his work.
-transcribed from The Daily Gazette, Schenectady NY.
