Community members can add their mark to new murals of a dragon and a phoenix this Friday at the Schlow Centre Region Library in State College.
“We're all hoping that folks look at the finished mural and see just the brightness and the imagination that went into the creation of it and look at that and think that's what the library is supposed to be in my community,” said Maria Burchill, the head of Adult Services at Schlow Centre Region Library.
A Penn State student, Margalo Guo said as she was designing the mural, the ideas of Chinese folk art and fiction and fantasy books were the two main inspirations for the work lining the library's parking garage entrance.
“I'm half Chinese, and I was thinking about how the dragon in Chinese culture is often paired with the phoenix in sort of a yin-yang relationship,” Guo said. “And that's how the idea came about, to have, since we've got two walls there, facing opposite each other, to have one as the dragon and one as the phoenix.”
Guo said that the community has an opportunity to paint details on the dragon and the phoenix.
“It's going to be a bunch of leaf stencils that I just made. We've got tulip tree leaves, oak leaves, all sorts, and like some little sparkles to go around them,” Guo said. “And then the phoenix is going to have phoenix feathers and sparkles on that side. So there's lots of fun stencils to choose from, hand drawn and cut out by me.”
Burchill said the mural is a part of a collaboration with 3 Dots Downtown, which received a grant through the Pennsylvania Arts Council and administered through the Office of Commonwealth libraries.
The community mural painting will take place at Schlow Centre Region Library on Friday from noon-2 p.m. and again from 4:30-6:30 p.m.