Have you noticed the new mural on the Penick Academic Complex wall?
I don’t know about you, but I definently have.
What used to be two blindingly white walls are now a cheerful array of yellow, red, blue and pink illustrations of the Logos, the Bell Tower, the new chapel and a yellow striped sunset behind the Logos.
It is titled, “The Work of His Hands.”
What brought about this sudden explosion of color on our mostly cream and brick campus? As nosy as I am, I had to find out.
My main informant of the addition to campus was Professor Danielle Sierra, Assistant Professor of Art and a professional artist, who led the project. She named the mural “
According to Sierra, the process for the mural started when Dr. Dub approached her about beautifying that corner of the PAC facing the Sub. Due to the flooding and a section of the building being torn down in Spring of 2025, the PAC was ready for an artitistic update.
Sierra sketched out a design, and after approval from Dr. Dub, one night she and her students began to sketch out the design onto the walls.
Claira Forrester, senior graphic design major at Union, helped sketch the design onto the walls one night before painting.
“What she ended up doing was projecting onto the wall the design with two projectors,” Forrester explained to me. “And then she gave us all paint markers, and we traced the design and she later went over it with marker to mark what each color was. She had a diagram of the colors and all of them were numbered and so she put all of the numbers in there so that we could all go in and fill in the paint. It was basically just a huge paint by number.”
After the design was sketched onto the walls, the official painting of the mural began on Campus and Community Day, where art students and even non-art majors such as Dr. Dub came to help with the first round of painting.
Contributing painter Hazel Moore, a social work major with an art minor, said, “It’s just cool to see that Dr. Dub and everyone who is higher up wants to prioritize beauty, especially in the building where a lot of beauty is actually being made because that’s where you have the art department.”
But even with this corner of the PAC having more character, one doubt still plagued me. Why bother beatifying a place that will not last for generations?
Sierra was not at all fazed by my doubt.
“It’s a waste of time to wait on anything when it comes to creating or making,” Sierra stated. “If there is an opportunity you can’t worry about where the art will be necessarily in five or ten years. If you feel called to make it, you answer the call… We can’t be concerned with the temporality of it; we just have to answer the call to glorify God in this moment.”
One of the passages of Scripture that inspired the mission of the mural is Romans 12:2, which reads, “”Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Sierra expressed how she wants the mural to glorify God by inspiring students to be transformed by scripture, God, and his creation, no matter how long it stays up.
“I’ve done murals before, where they were only up for a period of time,” Forrester also said. “But even if it is going to be taken down later, it still really matters for the people who are here now. We want to do things for future generations at Union but also it’s really good to do things for the people now.”
The mural is still in the process of getting finished, as art students paint second layers of paint over the first coat to increase longevity for the mural.
Words will also be added onto the mural after these coats are finished, for example, one being “Be Transformed” in reference to Romans 12:2.
“The Work of His Hands” has definently transformed that empty corner of the PAC.
“What this brings to the PAC specifically,” Sierra said, “Is the art that our spirit so desperately needs and to uplift everyone’s countenance. The colors are bright and vibrant in order to physically affect you… and I think that’s what it brings to the PAC, the color and art that it needed.”
Be the first to comment