A little paint goes a long way when sprucing up UAA’s Gear Room

On the second floor of the Student Union (SU), sandwiched between the Student Information Desk and the Union Station coffee shop, is the UAA Gear Room, a place for students, faculty and staff to rent items like snowshoes and skis in winter or a canoe and tent in summer. Recently, the space got a major facelift. A mural showcasing a quintessential Alaska summer scene now graces the main wall of the Gear Room.

"The space is an odd shape in the middle of the building and I wanted to spice it up with some student art as the bare gray walls were in need of some flair," said Tim Flynn, Student Union operations coordinator. When hiring freshman Rachel Kumpost and sophomore Liam Floyd this summer to work at the Info Desk and Union Station, he immediately recognized their artistic talents.

"Both had an opportunity to showcase their art in the Coffee Shop Lounge here in the SU and you can often see them drawing, editing, or talking about new art projects when they are waiting to clock on to their shifts," Tim said. "This was an easy way to give our student leaders an avenue to leave their mark on the building and to create more of a buzz about our Gear Room."

Meet the artists

Liam began his UAA career at Kenai Peninsula College (KPC) and although he's technically a sophomore, he's been taking classes through KPC since he was in high school. He transferred to UAA last fall.

"I'm going into engineering so I can do more design related things and still have an artistic aspect," he said of his degree choice. Liam's been doing art for as long as he can remember, mostly because of his father. "I was never really given coloring books as a kid; I just remember my dad handing me a blank piece of paper and a pencil." In addition to school and work, Liam squeezes in freelance art and design projects on the side.

"If I could, I would just do art, but I don't really want a career just doing art, because it's a really fun hobby," Liam said. "I don't want work and fun to get mixed up." So when Tim presented Liam with the opportunity to work on a large-scale art project, he jumped at the chance.

Like Liam, Rachel said she fell in love with art early on and remembers spending hours as a little kid getting creative with pencils and paint. Rachel's in her second semester at UAA and originally thought she would pursue an anthropology degree, but since she's started sketching again, she's been thinking of switching her major to art. So when Tim approached her about the project in the SU, she thought it was a great opportunity to flex her artistic muscles.

"I've never gotten to do one of those [a mural] - I was going to at my high school - but never got the chance," Rachel said.

From sketchbook to reality

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xianfKSkzh4[/embed]

Rachel said her initial sketch of the mural only took about five minutes, saying that multiple landscape scenes and elements popped into her head and she was able to put her ideas to paper quickly.

The hard work came after. She and Liam spent hours in the Gear Room scaling Rachel's sketch to fit the slotted wall and then actually painting in the mountain scene.

"I'm used to working with a smooth canvas or mixed medium paper, but having to do the mural on the slats, keeping from using too much paint and keeping the paint from dripping was hard," Rachel said. Liam added that the slats were troublesome and they'd often have to fix drips as their paint would pool up on the top of each slat and would run down their mural. But the two were enthusiastic about their project and the challenges it brought. So much so that Rachel decided to throw in an additional hurdle into the mix - using only primary colors.

"Tim did offer to give us more colors, but I really wanted that challenge of just using primary colors because I hadn't done it before, and I made it even more challenging by cutting out black," said Rachel.

And it's true, if you look closely there is no black in the painting - all the dark colors in the mural are a deep indigo blue or purple.

"I think that looks really well because it sort of has an abstract look to it," Liam said.

Future projects

Tim hopes these types of student art projects can continue, both for the Gear Room and elsewhere in the SU.

"We have a few more projects in mind and thought that this would be a great way to test the waters," said Tim. "There are a few more spaces in the building that can be easily modified to showcase future mural projects, and with budget, time in their schedules and approval from Student Life and Leadership and the Student Union Advisory Board, we hope to make more opportunities for our student leaders in the coming years."

Both Rachel and Liam would like to continue working on the art project as well, and hope Student Life & Leadership and the Student Union Advisory Board will approve additional Gear Room murals. The two have already made plans to create a spring and winter scene on the two additional Gear Room walls if they get the green light.

For now, she and Liam are happy to sit back and admire their hard work and hope their art brightens up a little corner of campus.

"Just knowing that when people walk by and see the mural - it feels like you did something good and maybe just made someone's life a little better," said Rachel.

Written by Catalina Myers, UAA Office of University Advancement