Friends Rebecca ConnerMiller, left, and Christina Kensinger hold mailboxes that they painted and stand in front of a storefront they did in Downtown Lewistown.

LEWISTOWN — Nearly 30 years ago, Christina (Lowmaster) Kensinger was an eighth-grader at Lewistown Middle School who spent more time in the art room than anywhere else in the building. While other students hurried through the third-floor hallway on their way to class, Kensinger lingered there, brush in hand, helping paint what became the school’s “wall of fine art.”

The project was ambitious for a middle school. Students recreated famous works like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Pablo Picasso’s “Three Musicians” and Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup” can. The originals, of course, were not hanging in Lewistown, but the student versions were bold and bright, a burst of color in a school that encouraged creativity wherever it could.

“The plan is we want to do something every year for the school,” art teacher Cassie Campbell said at the time in a February 1998 article in The Sentinel. “We wanted to teach them a little art history too.”

For Kensinger, the wall became more than a project. It became a place to belong. Eighth grade had no art classes, so she spent her time studying in the art room. She painted during lunch. She painted after school. She painted because she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

“My dad said as soon as I could hold a pencil, I would draw,” she said then. For Christmas that year, she painted him an ocean scene for his office. “We live here in Lewistown, away from the ocean, but if you want to see the ocean, you can look at it in a painting.”

She tried every medium she could get her hands on, but painting was always the one that felt like home. She even created the yearbook cover that year, a design so good the advisor called it “top notch,” though the details stayed secret until the books arrived.

“I honestly don’t know. I just always remember drawing and painting as a little kid,” Kensinger said recently. “People would say how good they were and I guess that just gave me the confidence to keep on creating. When you’re a kid, you don’t realize not everyone has that talent. It makes someone who doesn’t have a lot of confidence feel special.”

A long pause, then a return

Life eventually pulled her away from art. Years passed without painting, and the brushes sat untouched. But last Christmas, something shifted. Kensinger volunteered to help with window art for Deck the Downtown and felt something she hadn’t felt in years.

“I noticed how much better I felt,” she said. “My anxiety was always bad, but every time I had a paintbrush in my hand it’s like my anxiety just melted away.”

That rediscovery opened a door she didn’t expect.

One day at a local pharmacy, a woman recognized her window art and asked if she could paint a dog on her daughter’s mailbox. Kensinger said yes. Then someone else asked. Then another. Soon she was posting TikToks and Facebook videos, and custom mailbox requests started rolling in.

“I love painting plants and flowers, but if someone asked me to paint a fish, I would do that,” she said. “Someone asked me to paint their dog on a mailbox. I’ve done that. I like pushing myself out of my comfort zone. That’s the only way to grow your talent and ability.”

A creative partnership and a 53-foot wall

Kensinger isn’t creating alone. She and childhood friend Rebecca ConnerMiller started painting windows together for Deck the Downtown, and the partnership grew naturally from there.

“My friend Rebecca and I started this thing together,” she said. “We started painting windows, then it turned into these mailboxes, and now we’re painting a 53-foot mural for a business owner and possibly have another mural shortly after this one.”

The two met in high school in Ellen Reddy’s art class. They hit it off despite the fact that ConnerMiller was a senior and Kensinger was a freshman. They balance each other well. ConnerMiller likes a plan and a system. Kensinger paints by instinct.

“She enjoys having a plan and I show up and paint with a feeling,” Kensinger said. “We make a great team and balance each other out.”

The mural is their biggest project yet, a far cry from the small squares of the Lewistown Middle School wall. But in a way, it’s the same story — a young artist who once painted masterpieces on a school hallway now painting her own on a much larger stage.

Influence everywhere

Kensinger doesn’t point to one artist or one style as her inspiration. Instead, she sees influence everywhere.

“I feel like a little bit of everything in the art world influences me,” she said. “I always like to look up and see what other people are doing. I enjoy a creative mind.”

That curiosity, paired with the confidence she first found as a middle schooler with a paintbrush, has carried her into a new chapter — one where art is not just a childhood talent but a source of calm, connection and community.

Thirty years after she helped paint the wall of fine art at Lewistown Middle School, Kensinger is still painting. The canvases are bigger now. The audience is wider. But the heart behind it — the joy, the escape, the feeling of being exactly where she belongs — is the same as it was in 1998.

Follow Kensinger and ConnerMiller on Facebook by liking their “Brushes and Besties” Artistry and Design page. They’ve also posted photos of much of their work online.