By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Andrew Morrison, a 20-year-old painter, has been generating quite a buzz lately in the Licton Springs neighborhood.

Since June, he has been decorating the walls of the old Wilson-Pacific School building at Ashworth Avenue N and N 92nd Street with two huge, highly-realistic, spray-painted murals featuring Native American themes. Wilson-Pacific currently serves as the home for the American Indian Heritage School, which is operated by the Seattle Public School District.

Morrison, who is of Native American descent (half Apache, half Haida), has been drawing since he was a small child and painting for several years.

Earlier this year, Morrison attended a pow wow in Post Falls, Idaho, and took photographs, intending to use them in traditional paintings. However, when he noticed the blank walls at Wilson-Pacific, where he had been volunteering his artistic talents helping kids in a culture class at the American Indian Heritage School, his plans changed.

He had already helped with student mural at Wilso-Pacific, located outside classroom 509, and he got permission to use the building's walls a a canvas for his personal project as well. The first mural, in color, is finished and he hopes to finish the second mural, in black and white, by the end of September. John Meerscheidt, a neighbor of the school, is one of several Licton Springs residents to offer high praise for Morrison's murals. "I think it's wonderful what he's doing," Meerscheidt said. "It's a great addition to the neighborhood."

J.J. Avinger-Jacques, a Licton Springs Community Council board member, not only agrees, but has become one of Morrison's biggest advocates. She has not only been lobbying Sherwin Williams (makers of Krylon spray paint) for financial support for Morrison's arts education, but is applying for a $10,000 Small and Simple Grant through the Department of Neighborhoods to sponsor another wall at the Wilson-Pacific site. She is currently looking for volunteers to help in her efforts. The Licton Springs Community Council is also accepting cash donations for the project.

"The murals have so dramatically improved the quality of the Wilson-Pacific site that instead of being a neighborhood eyesore, it has become a neighborhood focal point and a place of interest to visit," Avinger-Jacques said.

When asked why he thought his work had drawn so much local attention, Morrison said that both the content and the size are unusual. v "I haven't seen a lot of murals around Seattle. It's really big. You don't see a lot of Native American themes around - it's different," Morrison said.

Undoubtedly, many viewers have also been impressed by Morrison's ability to convey realistic detail with a spray can instead of a brush. He said that the bigger a painting's scale, the easier spray paint is to use. These murals are several times the size of an adult in both width and height.

After he finishes his work at Wilson-Pacific, Morrison plans to apply to art schools. If he wins as many fans in the admission offices as he has in Licton Springs, he should go far.

For more information about the mural project, contact J.J. Avinger-Jacques at 528-1543. (