After years of wondering how to make their most visible building a more welcoming sight, the University of Idaho College of Art and Architecture has selected two murals to represent the university’s commitment to STEAMED (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, Education and Design).
The East Art and Architecture building faces out into downtown Moscow and serves as a gateway to the UI campus.
The murals were chosen through a multifaceted judging process, beginning with a small panel of community members and College of Art and Architecture (CAA) students and faculty. Later, the voting was turned over to the public, with four designs available to choose from in an online poll. The results of this poll declared Danielle Capelli and Darci Deaton winners of the design contest.
Diamond Koloski | Argonaut
UI senior Danielle Capelli shows off her winning mural Sunday afternoon on the side of Art and Architecture East.
Capelli, a fourth-year student at UI in the Art Education program, has already seen her design come to life. The art deco-style design titled “Deep” now occupies the smaller of the two spaces on the Art and Architecture building’s east side wall, and went up Oct. 5 and Oct. 6 in time for homecoming visitors to enjoy the new view.
Capelli said her winning submission came to be in a “happy accident” with her editing software.
“The original work that the mural is from was a painting I did last year, where the colors were yellows, grays and whites,” Capelli said. “I was editing the image and hit an ‘auto color’ option on the software I was using, and it changed all the yellows to reds and oranges and the grays to blues and teals.”
Capelli said she decided to submit both designs on a whim, and although the original design in Vandal colors didn’t make it past the preliminary panel judging, her accidental colors now grace the campus’s eastern boundary in a geometric pattern.
“There were seven colors in the original painting which I chose to match up with the seven letters of STEAMED,” Capelli said.
The influence of color in her piece is related to the art, education, and design component of her theme, she said.
The theme of STEAMED can also be found in her choice of geometric shapes. Capelli said the distinction between the rigid boundaries of individual shapes and the eye-catching pattern they make in combination represent the “structure of science, technology, engineering and math.”
“These (STEAMED) disciplines work together and do some amazing things,” Capelli said.
For Capelli, STEAMED is more than just a set of guidelines for her mural submission.
“As a lover of the arts, I think STEAMED is a critical turning point for the future of education,” Capelli said.
Acknowledging she has had the good fortune to attend schools with stable humanities programs, Capelli said she believes “there is still a long way to go to help more student get exposure to the arts.”
As someone who found her passion and purpose in the arts, Capelli said she wants “every student to be able to find their passion too.”
The second mural, designed by 2015 graphic design and international studies program graduate Darci Deaton, will be painted in the spring. Deaton said she was excited to learn about the mural project on Facebook because she has “always felt there was a bit of a disconnect between the university and the thriving downtown community,” and sees potential in the mural artwork to connect the two.
Deaton said she just moved back to the Palouse area, and said at first she “wasn’t serious about submitting a design because (she) only heard about the event a few days before the deadline.”
The inspiration for Deaton’s mural design came about in a spur-of-the-moment realization.
“I was driving home from work one day, I realized there were the same number of letters in the words STEAMED and Vandals, which led me to quickly imagine the design I ended up submitting,” Deaton said.
Deaton’s bold design titled “Vandals” was created to look good on a large scale as people drive by, but also holds more intricate details for those able to get a closer look.
“I like that the design has several layers that aren’t at first obvious,” Deaton said. “It brings it all together: the Palouse and Moscow, school pride and the research and education that are happening here.”
Both mural designs can be found on the CAA’s Instagram @uidahoartdesign and Facebook @uidahocaa. More information about the mural contest and the final totals reached by the crowd-funding efforts to support the mural painting costs are available at www.uidaho.edu/caa/programs/art-design/gateway-mural.
Beth Hoots can be reached at [email protected]