By Gary M. Baranec Students who participated in creating a mural for the pediatric ward of UPMC Altoona L-r Cam Filer, Deniz Albayrakdileo, Alaina Noel, back row: Pediatric RN nurse Ashley Holliday, Kaylee Burk and Michaela Etters.

Patients recovering in the hospital need all the positive vibes they can get, and a vibrant piece of artwork can help. A local artist has guided sixth graders at Juniata Gap Elementary School to create a mural, and this year’s version has been placed in the pediatric unit at UPMC Altoona.

“Anything positive always helps the healing process,” said Ashley Holliday, a registered nurse in UPMC’s pediatric unit. “It’s very encouraging. Anything to get them out of their room and keep them positive. The patients and their parents love it.”

“Reach for the Stars” is the brainchild of Pamela Snyder Etters, an Altoona mural artist who has worked with Juniata Gap sixth graders for five years to create murals that ended up in New York, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and a local We Care therapy facility.

Snyder Etters is one of dozens of artists — including dancers and florists — who present to the sixth graders every fall for the “Day of the Arts” event at Juniata Gap, which has a “great art program,” said principal Rich Adams.

Snyder Etters said her goal is to “teach the kids that murals are created with a purpose,” she said. She figures out in advance the destination of the murals to narrow the scope, and last fall, she worked with hospital officials to place the latest one in the pediatric unit.

“I asked the students, if you were stuck in a hospital, what would make you feel better?” Snyder Etters said. “They talked about what it … might be like for sick children having to stay in the hospital. So we came up with ‘Reach for the Stars.'”

One Juniata Gap student, Kaylee Burk, thinks that would have helped her when she was in the hospital last April for an emergency appendectomy.

“It was scary, and I didn’t know what was going on,” she said at the dedication of the mural earlier this month. “This (mural) would have made me happy knowing that someone else cares.”

The 4-by-5-foot mural has the handprint of every Juniata Gap sixth grader this school year. Some of the students also created handprints that were cut out and glued on. Others drew and painted small-scale pictures that included sick and well children. For example, Denzi Albayrak-DiLeo created a boy with a broken leg using crutches.

“I told them there aren’t standard rules for this, and they came up with purple clouds,” Snyder Etters said, noting that the mural was mostly completed in one day.

They also drew and cut out foam stars for an interactive element.

“The mural is meant to be just that, an interactive mural where children will place their name on a star when admitted,” Snyder Etters said. “That star will then be hung on or next to the mural. Throughout their treatment, it will hang there as a reminder to them to reach for their star and fight to get better and be able to leave. Then when their treatment is over, and they are headed home, they will get to retrieve their star and take it with them.

“Our hope is that it will help heal body, mind and soul. … I think it helps them to step away from their reality for the moment.”

A graduate of Altoona Area High School, Snyder Etters has been active in the arts since obtaining her bachelor’s in fine arts from Penn State in 2003. For a time, she worked as a mural artist on community revitalization efforts in towns across Pennsylvania from a base in Milton.

Snyder Etters returned to Altoona and started a family with her husband, Travis, and thanks in part to her background in music as a French horn player, she became executive director of the Altoona Symphony Orchestra. She also is head coach of the women’s soccer team at Penn State Altoona and head coach of a select travel under-18 girls soccer team.

Snyder Etters said she makes time for her “No. 1 passion, murals.”

“I feel art is such a powerful and universal medium, and I have found a real voice among our local and international youth through my work,” she wrote in her mission statement.

Snyder Etters founded the Murals Talk initiative to connect children from different states and cultures through murals. After she spearheaded a mural exchange in 2013 between Juniata Gap Elementary School and Tangier Smith Elementary School on Long Island, New York, she was honored by her high school for her service to education, an award given to about 100 people since its inception more than 30 years ago.

Since then, she facilitated and executed mural and cultural exchanges between Juniata Gap and schools in San Jose, Costa Rica and Kingston, Jamaica.

“The one we did two years ago went to Jamaica,” Snyder Etters said of the 4-by-10-foot mural. “Our kids here started it and then we took it to Jamaica where the students there finished it.

“We want to teach students that art can be a catalyst to conversation. It can bridge barriers. I might not be able to speak someone’s language, but I can draw a picture for them.”

Mirror Staff Writer Cherie Hicks is at 949-7030.