Each service plaza along the Pennsylvania Turnpike now contains a mural depicting landscapes and attractions in their areas. The murals were created by local high school students under a program called Art Sparks, a joint effort of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Turnpike Commission.
Mark Compton, CEO of the Turnpike Commission, says they want to make the service plazas more welcoming to visitors.
“As we see it, about 550 ,000 travelers use this system every day and very few ever get off the system other than where their destination is. So, we wanted to make sure that some of the beautiful places around the Turnpike were able to be viewed from the service plaza, and that really was why we did what we did.”
Jamie Dunlap of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts says this project had a huge impact on the students.
“It's given them a chance to be a part of the creation of public art that is community driven and to work with a professional artist and to have that experience and to work with a client to then have amazing artwork produced at the end that is installed.”
Dana Attivo is an art teacher on the very first mural project. The project took a few years, however, it brought the students together while creating the mural.
“It's been quite a few years since we've done this, but we were super excited to participate, and one of the things that, speaking of the benefits that I noticed in my classroom is that group specifically, we had some small groups. We had a couple of friend groups that would come in and hang out with each other, and most of them were juniors that were working on the project. And by their senior year, it created such a different, tight -knit community in our classroom, because they all had to work together with each other. They weren't just coming in and doing their own thing. So we really loved the opportunity to put some work out into our community. We really loved the community that it created in our own classroom, and we loved the opportunity to work with a professional artist.”
Katie Trainer and her students were the final group to create their murals. Trainers believe it forced her students to learn about local landscapes in their religion.
“So getting them involved with the design, like what's important to you guys? You can't like at first all the students seem to be hesitant, like, oh, what do you mean Shippensburg is important? And it's like, well, no, it's what's like good. What's the value of your heritage or your town? What are some of the iconic buildings or what do you guys like to do? And so, getting them invested in the community aspect is always a very big deal. And from there, I can kind of find the common themes of what they've chosen to express and merge them together, figure out how it makes sense and then get painting.”
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