First-year College of Design students carefully planned and executed a tribute to the college, Dean Marvin Malecha, and the design process with a Warhol-inspired mural.
Ryan Whitley and Matt Hirsch, first-year students at the NC State University College of Design, wanted to make a splash at the Free Expression Tunnel on campus. But a splash of such dimensions would require a lot of paint and quite a bit of help.
When all was said and done, it took 9 hours, 20 gallons of white primer, 31 cans of spray-paint, and 35 pairs of hands to pull off the Designstein mural the night of Oct. 17th.
(View a Flickr slideshow of mural photos, or a YouTube video of the making of the mural.)
The mural features a quotation by Malecha from the “The Brick,” a first-year orientation NC State student publication. All of NC State’s deans were invited to offer advice to incoming students. Malecha’s advice: “You have before you the opportunity to ask deep questions, to explore as you never have and to redesign whom you are on the basis of what you believe. Be open to all that is available to you, participate broadly in the life of the university community. Be wary of the trivial and the superficial. See to find the joy in your life.”
Whitley got the germ of the idea for a mural as he was sitting in a studio critique and imagined painting the entire Free Expression Tunnel white. No one had ever done that, as far as he knew. But what else should be painted on the newly blank canvas?
Following that studio class was the dean’s class, and Whitley’s idea started to develop further. A conversation with Hirsch had the pair settling on a portrait of Malecha, but rather than a single head they began toying with the approach Andy Warhol took with Marilyn Monroe.
Alex Backeris, another freshman, used a photo of Malecha from the main College of Design website as a model and did a computer stylization of Malecha’s portrait. That was projected on a sheet of 40″ by 36″ cardboard and traced with a marker. From that, four stencils were made.
“Warhol used three colors for each of his portraits, but each of ours used four,” Hirsch explained. The pair built on Warhols color schemes, integrating teal and some off-colors that Warhol had avoided.
The mural’s squares are each 42″ by 42″. The title, Designstein, reflected the portrait’s resemblance to physicist Albert Einstein. To give the piece a mark of the college, Hirsch quickly crafted a logo.
Painting started at 10 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 17th. Students arrived in shifts to roll primer over the entire tunnel, which stretches about 40 feet under railroad tracks between the Brickyard and the campus bookstore. One non-design student had to wait several hours for the white paint to dry before he could add his own graffiti to the other end of the bridge, a tribute to a friend who had died.
After the first shift, students began signing their names to the work, and soon everyone who took part had signed it. Most of the students contributed $10 to $20 to offset the cost of the paint.
Dean Malecha, the mural’s subject, had nothing but good things to say about the work.
“I am impressed by the effort of the students who came together to create what is a great expression of College spirit. Their work is excellent and a great representation of the work we have come to expect from the BEST STUDENTS ON CAMPUS!”
Said Malecha: “I am truly honored by these students that they have selected me as their subject and made so many kind comments. In my heart I am a teacher. They have touched my heart.”
For Whitley and Hirsch, spray-paint art is definitely a new joy they’ve discovered since arriving on campus. Designstein falls on the heels of another mural the two painted prior to the Georgia Tech / NC State football game, which depicted a GT yellow-jacket getting sprayed with pesticide. “That mural stayed up for four days,” says Hirsch. “We were really surprised. But people here at NC State really do appreciate good art and didn’t want to ruin it right away.”
“I think the (new) mural will stay up for about a week. It’s already been two days, and no one has even touched that whole wall, even though half of it is white.”
Hirsch added that every time he’s visited the mural, he’s seen someone taking a photograph of it. “That’s really rewarding,” he says.
