The wall on Trenton Street in West Monroe has been transformed into the vision of Brooke Foy, an art instructor and faculty member.

For years, the levee stretched a mile wide. Plain, the wall received little attention from passerbys– but not Foy.

Foy said, “I had a strong desire to put some color on it. Put something beautiful, something different, something exciting and then the idea turned from immediately wanting to paint it but wanting to paint it as a community project to really make it something that unites our community.”

One Mile of Love was born.

Foy was also forming her new business, ARROW Public Art.

Emery Thibodeaux, an artist and designer, joined forces with Foy in the business.

Thibodeaux hopped on board and joined Foy in making the proposal for One Mile of Love.

They reached out to the community and later stood before the West Monroe Chamber of Commerce.

Major Jamie Mayo met them and supported the project with great enthusiasm.

The pair decided the wall would not be their art but an even better idea– art from children all over the community.

The idea was presented again in a meeting with Ouachita Parish principals.

The children simply drew images with whatever writing tool they had on hand.

Almost every school in Ouachita Parish contributed and the ages of the children ranged from four to 14.

Making sure to keep something from every school, they condensed 3000 images to about 260.

“It was just beautiful. We just took the drawings and placed them into a mural – we literally made a paper mural,” Foy said.

Brown gym became their studio due to the length.

Hours of work resulted in themes of campfires, sports, friendship and science.

June marked Foy’s dream unfolding as the levee began its’ transformation.

During the night, crews would take transparencies of line drawings from the children’s images and project nearly 400 images to the wall. and community volunteers worked diligently on the wall.

After three months of work from, the mural was complete.

ARROW, along with the West Monroe Chamber of Commerce andsupport from DWMRG, plan to celebrate the wall in October with a block party.

Foy and her partner Thibodeaux believe the wall shows the influence of teamwork and impacted the community.

Regarding the future, Foy said she is interested in projects involving community and campus-wide collaboration.