Lipscomb students debut "psycho"-delic mural leading to psych department
Janel Shoun |
From now on, students heading down the Ward Hall eastern stairway will be entering more than the psychology department. They’ll be entering a psychedelic experience as they walk through a mural created by five students in Lipscomb’s “Art in Public Spaces” class.
A dedication was held Thursday, Dec. 14, for the mural, covering all four walls of the stairway to the Ward basement and some of the hallway wall space. It was commissioned by the psychology department and created by the students over the course of four weeks.
The multi-colored, neon mural was inspired by J. Ridley Stroop, an internationally known psychologist who taught at Lipscomb from 1948 to 1964. Stroop discovered the “Stroop Effect,” a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task, most often demonstrated by trying to read colored names of colors.
So the mural includes plenty of colorful features and perceptual illusions, such as an oversized fire hydrant, an inverse silhouette and 3-D windows and mirrors.The art students went through everything a professional artist vying for a public art contract would have to go through – creating a proposal, signing a contract, meeting the specifications of the commissioning body and creating an artwork suitable for the public space. The students had to research the needs of the department, develop three proposals and incorporate feedback into the selected design.
“They were really good to work with and had really good suggestions,” said Deidre Byrum, senior from Franklin, Ky., of the selection committee, made up of psychology professors, practicum students and the science college dean. They wanted a design that was low-maintenance, lasting and practical for the space, she said.
Creating art for public spaces is all about learning to compromise while keeping the artistic integrity of the work, because public art is usually commissioned with a certain goal in mind, said professor Rocky Horton, assistant professor of art and instructor of the class.
“This was designed to make them work as a team, to do a project larger than any one of them could do on their own,” he said. “They had to develop the ability to think as a group. In creating public art, you have to learn how to preserve those aspects that are really worthy but learn to compromise as well.”
An “Art in Public Spaces” class is fairly unique, Horton said, noting that only a dozen or so colleges in the nation have such a class.
In keeping with its psychological theme, the mural was designed to show that “Your perception is not always reality,” said Lauren Farris, a senior from Nashville.
It includes plenty of inspiration from Lipscomb campus sites such as the fire escape on Sewell Hall, Johnson Residence Hall, High-Rise Residence Hall and the Granny White Pike merchants, giving it an urban feel, she said. In addition, each of the five art students found their way into the mural as silhouettes doing various things such as yelling out a window or climbing the walls just inside the doorway.
The five students who created the mural are: Ben Wood, junior from Nashville; Kasey Mattox, senior from Old Hickory, Leah Hess, senior from Houston; Byrum; and Farris.