In a rural Wisconsin city of just more than 1,200 people, the hyperlocal and the universal converge in a new mural by Pat Perry (previously). “27 Schoolteachers and a Volcano” is just as its title suggests: the large-scale piece depicts snow-capped mountains with an explosive volcano at its center, while small portraits of local educators line the top and bottom borders.

Commissioned by Princeton Art Collective, the mural captures the vertiginous experience of life today, particularly as we consume more information than ever before and must confront seemingly endless disasters and devastations around the globe. Perry wanted to highlight how we can “find meaning in ordinary life while constantly witnessing things happening in the world beyond your control.”

“Even in a small rural town, you’re not insulated from the immense forces that shape the world. History happens. Economies rise and fall. Wars begin. Continents drift and mountains erode. One day, the sun will expand and swallow the Earth. Most of us don’t get much of a say in any of it,” he says.

To conceptualize the work, the collective helped to contact and secure permissions from the teachers pictured, and with the exception of the woman in the red floral garment at the bottom of the piece—she’s the artist’s mother and a retired educator—all work in the area. And why teachers? Perry explains:

Day after day, people find purpose. They wake up early, show up with intention, and try to make sense of things—not just for themselves, but also for others. Teachers do this every day. Not for recognition, and rarely for much pay. It’s a repetitive act of maintenance that holds things together.
Choosing to shoulder that task, even while standing at the edge of something vast and indifferent, is a quiet act of defiance. Amidst overwhelmingness and uncontrollableness and unanswerableness, teachers—and all custodians of human affairs—keep meaning in the world by steadily and stubbornly tending to it.

“27 Schoolteachers and a Volcano” is located in Princeton, Wisconsin. Find more from Perry on his website and Instagram.