The vocational wing of the high school, a.k.a “the dungeon,” often gets a bad rap due to the narrow, dark hallway with exposed pipes on the ceiling. But several Tyrone art students have added some life to the walls with new murals honoring the values of several of the subjects taught in this section of the school.

The mural honoring the health tech program outside of Mrs. Christie Taylor’s classroom was created by Emma Reese and assisted by Kathrine Lehner.

“I wanted something that wasn’t done before, and I thought of a person,” said Reese, “I knew that Mrs. Taylor wanted words and Mr. Feather helped with the x-ray. It was really hard to come up with some of the letters…especially the ‘E’.”

The mural centers on a nurse in a mask and scrubs holding a radiograph of a rib cage. Surrounding the nurse are the words “Health Tech” made out of an assortment of various medical equipment and related material: lungs, an otoscope overlapped by a pair of scalpels, suture scissors, curved forceps, a crutch, DNA, an Asclepius style caduceus, a syringe overlapping a thermometer and two scalpels, a stethoscope, and bandaids.

Art teacher Eric Feather highlighted the fact that the project was student-driven.

“I am especially proud of the fact that the students took the initiative to design the murals themselves,” said Feather, “While the execution of the mural involves much artistic skill, the designing of the mutual is more demanding of their creative talents.”

The teachers were also very pleased with the new art honoring their academic disciplines.

“I absolutely love my mural,” said Taylor, “It is beyond what I ever could have pictured in my head. Emma has the ability to think beyond the usual run of the mill images that I would have chosen. Thank heavens for creative people. I felt like I hit the lottery with the opportunity to have this beautiful mural placed outside of the health tech classroom.”

Though not in the dungeon, the students also recently installed a mural around math teacher Christopher Shedd’s door. It was designed and painted by senior Éva Toth and assisted by Natalie Saltsgiver.

“I started by finding a picture of a tree,” said Toth. “He teaches Algebra, so I just added different math concepts. I like the one branch, it is made out of asymptotes.”

The mural depicts the silhouette of a dark sapling. Whirled around the tree is an array of mathematical concepts. The base ten numerals repeat across the background, equations and formulas fit the space between the branches, and instruments and graphs fill the remaining spaces.

The hexagonal background is accredited to Natalie, who laid the foundation of the mural.

“My classroom entrance mural is a great representation of our curriculum. The mural is really spectacular,” said Shedd, “Every time I look at it I see something new that I didn’t notice before! Really wonderfully done. [They] did a fantastic job. I very much appreciate [their] work.”

The murals help bring an identity to all of the classrooms they honor and emphasize the uniqueness of each curriculum.

The response from the students has been positive as well.

“They are all pretty cool. The students did a great job,” said sophomore John Isenberg.