Twenty-two years ago, Claudia Hardin and friends painted a whimsical mural to benefit children at Cabrillo Elementary School on Talbot Street in Point Loma. Hardin and the mural were featured on the front page of the Peninsula Beacon at the time.

Recently, she restored it, also with a little help from a friend.

“The original wall mural was painted during the 1999-2000 Christmas break,” said Hardin, the artist who designed and painted it with the help of her daughters, Stina and Tage Eriksen, and their friend, Jacob Eurich. “Also helping were Shane and Lexi Hardin, whose father, Mike, owned Hodads, and who later became my husband. Mike did some of the painting as well.

“This time around, I re-painted the mural with the help of my best friend’s daughter, Claudia Graham.”

Concerning the purpose of her mural, Hardin said, “It was a gift,” adding she spent a lot of time at the school and was PTA president there for a while. “I wanted to do some image of children playing on the playground,” she said.

Of the composition of her mural, Hardin noted, “The children are life-size. I sketched our children and one friend. The way I designed and painted it was pretty much in squares, to make it easy for any kind of restoration work if it ever needed to be re-painted.”

A recent visit with her daughter to the school to view the mural showed it needed freshening. “Large patches had fallen off the wall, literally, so the wall itself was exposed,” Hardin said. “It was aged. There was a funny patina to it. The colors had all faded. It looked decayed, run-down, and dirty. It broke my heart.”

Hardin said she couldn’t have restored her mural without Graham’s help. “She is an artist, and she managed to be here at the right time,” she pointed out adding that, working together, it took them about three weeks, working four or five hours daily, to restore the wall mural.

“I’m very pleased,” Hardin concluded. “It is a joyful, colorful, child-centric, playful mural.”

Added Hardin, “It wasn’t meant to be anything deep, just a celebration of childhood.”

Hardin added her oldest daughter was depicted in the corner of the mural reading a book. “At the time, the principal was pushing literacy, so a child reading a book, that was a good enough depiction of literacy.”

Hardin hopes here wall mural will continue to endure. “The mural has held up in terms of its style,” she said adding, “I just wanted the kids to have something pretty. Schools are almost always drab with their institutional-beige kind of colors.”

Added Hardin: “My mural was the first one painted [at the school]. Now there are quite a few others.”

Hardin also thanked Cabrillo Elementary Principal Rebecca Vogel for her support in the restoration of her mural.