Alumni
Class of 1962 Presents Artwork
A highlight of Lancaster Mennonite’s 1962 class reunion was the unveiling of an art piece that the class planned as a gift to the school in appreciation for their LMS education. The two-part art piece by classmate and artist Emmett Murphy includes on one side the one-room Lancaster County Amish school where Murphy’s mother taught years ago. The other side is a tumbling blocks quilt pattern where classmates were invited to sign their names. Attached in the middle is a chainlink fence that can swing its shadow over either side—inspired after Murphy visited the school and found a fence had been erected in response to the Nickel Mines tragedy.
In his presentation to the class, Murphy cautioned about the use of fences. “Never build a fence you can’t sit on to share your lunch with a friend,” he said. “If you build a useless fence, you’ll get caught alone on the wrong side with your ignorance. Like the Great Wall of China, it’s only a matter of time before they find a way over, under or through the fence.”
This past fall, Murphy presented the interactive art piece during a Lancaster Mennonite High School chapel service and explained its meaning to the students. Afterward the art was placed in the campus’s media center.
Murphy says that many of the ideas for his oil, acrylic, and watercolor landscape paintings come from the beautiful mountainous area near his home in Troy, New York. Some of his most recent work, however, is based on childhood recollections that began while growing up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His school teacher mother nourished an early interest in art with visits to the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), and Metropolitan museums.
The artist graduated from Elizabethtown College and after completing his master’s in art at Millersville University, studied etching and lithography with Dr. Robert Nelson at Millersville. He eventually opened his own art gallery in Lancaster.
Murphy has three grandchildren at Lancaster Mennonite school—Ashley and Eric Kemp at the high school and fifth grader Christian Kemp at the Locust Grove Campus.
