Pennsylvania College of Art & Design

The mural at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design’s Chestnut and Prince Street portico was completed during the latter days of August and many enjoyed observing its metamorphosis. Here’s an excerpt from PCA&D’s press release:

The mural in the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design portico is being created by Root 222, a Reading, Pa.-based group of artists who are also members of PCA&D’s alumni community.  Deric Hettinger ’02, Schon Wanner ’08 and Anthony Mark comprise this collaborative that functions like a musical improvisational trio.

Their painting will “serve as a visual map to the metaphysical core of the poem…” according to Root 222’s artist statement. . . “The mural’s backdrop – a sun set within a nocturne – serves as a reference to the duality contained in the poem, as Szybist’s speaker is both compassionate and fierce. The sky could also be interpreted as a cosmos, a point of creative origin. This aspect seems especially appropriate given that the painting serves as a singular point in a city-wide celebration of creativity, to be installed on a building dedicated to the instruction of the next generation of young artists.”

The poem for PCA&D’s project, “All Times and All Tenses Alive In this Moment,” was written by Mary Szybist, a native of Williamsport, Pa., and an assistant professor of English at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.  Her poem is presented in a sunburst format with no linear beginning or end, and Szybist states that she was “…thinking about faith and doubt and how the two can be entwined and even, perhaps, simultaneous.  I wanted each line to read as a declaration and as an open question.”

Szybist’s poem was featured by Poets.org, the web site of the Academy of American Poets, as a “poem of the day” in January 2011, and will be included in her second book, “Incarnadine,” which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.  “All Times and All Tenses Alive In this Moment” was selected with input from the public and by a committee comprised of PCA&D staff, faculty members, alumni and students.