A new University of Toledo mural spanning 158 feet bridges the disciplinary distance between art and engineering.
The big, bold, bright, and mostly blue artwork stretches along an indoor wall connecting Nitschke Auditorium to the Tom and Betsy Brady Engineering Innovation Center.
UT art and engineering students and students from the Toledo School for the Arts designed the mural, which depicts engineering college innovations and references a retro-inspired style reminiscent of the late Cincinnati artist Charley Harper.
Some of the students who worked on the mural, university officials, and Mr. and Mrs. Brady, who sponsored the project, gathered Tuesday to celebrate its completion.
One end of the mural illustrates a Leonardo da Vinci-esque catapult and progresses past UT-related innovations, such as the depiction of a noninvasive method to measure glucose. The other end features a rocket blasting off from Earth.
High school and university students brainstormed the design and installed screen-printed, cutout images with a wallpaper-like technique developed by associate professor of art Arturo Rodriguez.
One student called it “extreme decoupage.”
“This is not simply a piece of artwork they created. They have really created a new set of conversations,” said interim president Nagi Naganathan, who has a doctorate in mechanical engineering and championed the project. “Today we are using humanities to describe engineering.”
Students also saw the project as an artistic representation of the many possible links between science and art, or the right and left sides of the brain, as fourth-year art major Shelly Trivisonno of Columbus described it.
“There is creativity in the sciences, and I think that ... we use sciences also even though we are in a more creative field,” she told an audience of about 60 who came to see the completed mural. “It doesn’t have to be that big of a divide.”
Mr. Brady, founder of Plastic Technologies Inc. in Holland, praised the partnership between art and engineering and said the mural showcases the university’s future.
“We need to expose engineers and scientists to other ways to learn how to think creatively so that they can use engineering and science in a creative way,” he said, calling the integration of art and science a personal passion.
The Brady Engineering Innovation Center, which bears the donors’ names, was dedicated in fall of 2013. The mural enlivens an adjacent, curving corridor.
Art student Grace Parr, a sophomore from Toledo, helped cut a ceremonial blue ribbon stretched across the hallway. She was among the first to volunteer after receiving an email soliciting student participation from Barbara Miner, the art department’s interim chairman.
Throughout the process of designing, drawing, and installing the mural, Ms. Parr said she learned that art isn’t limited to canvas.
Among her favorite parts of the mural is the colorful, cartoonish rocket that anchors one end. She was struck by the project’s vast scale after seeing the rocket that she worked on enlarged and soaring through space.
“You can bring art anywhere, and it can be with anything. I never would have thought of connecting engineering and art in this way, and it just became larger than I’d ever thought it would be,” Ms. Parr said.
Contact Vanessa McCray at: vmccray@theblade.com or 419-724-6065, or on Twitter @vanmccray.
First Published April 29, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
