St. Paul’s Church traces its beginnings to 1836. A brick Gothic church was constructed in 1848 and consecrated the following year. A new chapel to accommodate the growing congregation has been built behind the old church and the two buildings connected with a common area. Services are still held in the old chapel for an early Sunday worship. St. Paul’s has followed the ancient tradition of burying the dead within the confines of the church grounds and is surrounded by a cemetery. The Coventry Chapel-an outdoor chapel and labyrinth-has been constructed just outside the graves in the churchyard.

The floor of Coventry Chapel is a labyrinth constructed of intricately laid brick patterned after the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France.  The surrounding low wall offers a columbarium as a place of beauty and simplicity for cremated remains. A labyrinth is an ancient symbol used for walking meditation. The labyrinth at St. Paul’s Coventry Chapel is open to the community as a place to “quiet the mind, soothe the soul, and mend the heart.”

The Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes was instrumental in bringing the fresco to Wilkes County. One of the council’s goals for the Quality of Life-Arts and Culture for the Wilkes County Vision 20/20 program was to secure renowned artist, Benjamin F. Long, IV, to paint a fresco in Wilkes. 

A unique opportunity came to St. Paul’s in 2002 when the Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes and St. Paul’s parish became partners after Long agreed to paint the two frescoes in the commons area at the church.  Both Roger Nelson and James Daniel assisted Long in painting the frescoes. Members of St. Paul’s parish, Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes board members, Long, Daniel, Nelson, and Knox Bridges met to discuss the process and the theme for the fresco. Unanimously, the group agreed the frescoes should depict the Apostle Paul.

The two frescoes depicting the life of Paul are executed masterfully by artist, Benjamin Long, IV. Long uses the same fresco technique Michelangelo chose when he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The technique involves mixing sand and lime, placing the mix on a wall and painting while it is still wet. The crew grinds expensive pigments from clays and minerals imported from France and Italy to mix colors used in the frescos. The bonding of the pigment to wet plaster requires meticulous planning and great skill. Unlike oil painting, to correct a mistake, the artist must cut the entire day’s work out and start over. “The wall tells you what to do”, says Long.

With a fresco, there are many steps before the first stroke of paint is placed on the wall. The scratch coat is made up of partially slaked lime combined with sand. The preliminary drawings were sketched and then refined. Individual studies of certain elements of the painting, such as portraits were produced to help in the artist's development of the original composition.

Cartoons were created and enlarged to the full scale of the finished fresco to ensure the accuracy when transferring the drawing to the wall. The wall was made into a grid where the drawings were traced on the wall through a process called pouncing. A large needle is used to punch along the traced lines every few inches. These punched tracings are affixed to the wall and a dry medium is used to create a dotted outline on the scratch coat.

The final painting surface must be neither too wet nor too dry. Extreme care is given to mixing the pigments with distilled water. Mulling is labor intensive, but necessary to ensure that pigments and lime crystals are ground finely enough to be drawn into the porous plaster as it dries. The fresco is now completed with the elegant colors for people to view.

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