The Penn Stater Magazine

A Hidden Mural at Old Main

June 30, 2010 at 12:49 pm Tina Hay Leave a comment

When we were trying to pick a cover for our July-August issue, we sort of knew that it should have something to do with our aerial photo essay of University Park. But the question was, Which of those aerial shots should we use? Our art director, Carole Otypka, selected a handful of them and mocked each one up as a potential cover, then invited us to take a look at them on her computer screen.

As you can see, we ended up choosing one taken by Andy Colwell as the helicopter was perched practically on top of Old Main. We liked how striking the angle is, we liked that there was room to drop in some copy, and we thought Old Main would be more iconic than, say, a shot of the golf courses.

It wasn’t until we looked at the photo blown up on Carole’s extra-large, art-director-sized monitor that we noticed something: a mural ringing the front of Old Main. You can click on the photo here to get a better look at it. See the long horizontal painting of green grass, blue skies, and white clouds?

“What’s up with that?” we wondered. It’s like a piece of public art, but you would never see it unless you were inside Old Main, four floors up—or if you happened to be in a helicopter hovering directly over Old Main. (And you don’t get to do that too often.)

I made a few phone calls to find out the story behind the mural, and it turns out that it’s the work of Melanie Eger ’04, who did it as an art student in 2001. She worked on it over the course of five months as an independent-study project. You can read more about it here.

And just a reminder that you can see a lot more aerial photos of University Park by going to the magazine’s Facebook page and clicking on the “Photos” tab. While you’re there, hit the “like” button to become a fan of the magazine’s page.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: College of Arts and Architecture, Covers, Penn State alumni, The Penn Stater magazine, University Park campus. Tags: aerial photos, Andy Colwell, helicopter aerials, Melanie Eger, murals, Old Main.