Two teachers and at least 40 students created a unique mural in the hallways of the Line Mountain High School.
Art teacher Wes Wagner and math teacher Charles Keer and their students on Monday unveiled “The Color of Flight” in the hallway between the art and math departments. The wall mural, which depicts an eagle flying out of a hallway, uses leading lines and contrasting shapes to create the illusion of space and dimension.
“It’s a lot of neat geometry mixed into the artwork and painting decisions,” Wagner said.
Wagner explained the project combines anamorphic art and optical art.
Anamorphic employs a unique form of perspective in which the art can only be viewed properly from one single vantage point. Away from this point, distortion and warped forms create a uniquely abstracted image. As a person walks down the hall away from that vantage tile, the proportions of the mural becomes oblique and exaggerated. The art changes because it is based on a grid system that has tapering geometric proportions.
Optical art plays on the mind and eye by using leading lines and contrasting shapes. In this design, they created the illusion of an additional hallway that appears to lead off into the art department wing using black and white rectangles. Even the railing appears to disappear into the background, Wagner said.
The initial design was produced in Adobe Photoshop based on a photo of the wall taken at eye height in the hallway and combined with other photo resources. More than 500 layers and 32 hours of design went into the file before printing a master copy. Then a grid system utltizing the wall block mortar joints with numbers and letter was devised on the wall and translated to the master, Wagner said.
Using the master print, a tripod-mounted laser and the grid, points of reference were made to produce an outline drawing. By end of summer 2018, the wall painting was concluded and varnished, Wagner said.
Junior Katelyn Strohecker, 16, of Dornsife, and sophomore Anna Shaffer, 16, of Sunbury, both helped create the mural.
“I like that the project is really different than anything I’ve ever seen,” Strohecker said. “When you stand at a certain angle, everything lines up. You can see exactly what it’s supposed to be, but as you walk down the side it gets really exaggerated and spread out.”
Shaffer said her favorite thing to do is paint.
“I like how it’s really different and creative,” Shaffer said.
Keer also created a geometric diagram and math problem based on the measurements and geometry. The first Line Mountain student who can correctly solve the problem listed on the sign wins a prize.
