Damien Memorial School students have commissioned a graffiti artist to paint a two-story mural of their school’s namesake, St. Damien de Veuster.

The mural is being painted on the Kalihi’s school’s front building and depicts Damien looking over a foreground of the ocean and Kalaupapa, Molokai — the remote peninsula where he pioneered the care of Hansen’s disease patients.

A student design team conceived the idea and raised funds to hire an artist, said school CEO and President Wes Reber Porter in a news release.

Porter said the students were inspired by graffiti designs in Kakaako and how artwork is used to transform open spaces on walls. “So they asked, ‘Wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be impactful to our community if we had graffiti on the side of one of our buildings that everyone could see?’” said Porter.

The street artist, John Weeks, has been working on the mural day and night since Monday and expects to finish it this weekend. Instead of scaffolding, Weeks uses two aluminum ladders. A video taken of the artist at work on the mauka-facing wall of the front building can be viewed here.