News Release
July 2003
(Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)—Over
the month of June, two Moravian art students and an adjunct art instructor
transformed
a bare white wall in the lobby of an Easton clinic into a tropical
jungle.
The recently opened St. Luke’s Center for Women’s
Health Services on Northampton Avenue now offers children almost
50 feet of
cool greenery, brilliant flowers, and a tempting pool of blue water
under a starry sky. Its menagerie of colorful inhabitants includes
a toucan, a pair of giraffes, an elephant, a gymnastic monkey, a flamingo,
a zebra, a frog, and butterflies.
Art instructor Jan Crooker says the inspiration
for the mural came from two prints by serigrapher Mike Smith that
originally hung on the
wall. One was called “Elephant Bird,” the other “Giraffes
in Karlsruhe,” site of one of Germany’s best-known zoos.
“We figured that if they had these up, they must like them,
so we’d stick with that theme,” said Crooker. “A
mural is something you can’t take away, and we didn’t want
St. Luke’s to hate us.”
The students were Allison Pollison ’03, Sparta, N.J., and Tracy
Maalouf ’04, Bethlehem. Pollison participated in Moravian’s
spring Commencement, but she needed one more art credit to graduate
with her art education degree. Both believe the mural experience will
give them better employment prospects. “I couldn’t have
asked for two better students,” Crooker said.
All three -- teacher and students -- worked on
the mural two days a week for a month to complete it. Crooker allowed
the students to
make pencil drawings of Mike Smith’s animal designs, then expand
them with other animals and vegetation to fill a space much wider than
it is long. (Each of the two wall panels is 8¼ feet high and
22½ feet wide.) Then she imposed a grid on their drawing.
Asked if the grid system really was necessary,
Crooker said: “It’s
the only way to do a mural.” She explained that transferring
the design to the wall square by square helps stabilize the design
and maintains its proportions, so it doesn’t shrink or swell
or ride uphill or downhill as different painters work on it.
Crooker and the students chose and mixed the colors for the mural,
which is less brilliant than the Smith drawings. Its background colors
are cool, laden with greys, blues, and purples, to contrast with the
animals.
The animals are sized to the wall and also to the children who will
be its primary patrons. The giraffes and the elephant are much smaller
than life-size, the zebra about life-size, the toucan and the monkey
larger. This makes the critters approachable by children of all ages
and sizes.
The clinic, which opened in December, occupies
the space formerly tenanted by Tucker’s Yarn. It’s just down the block from
the State Theater, on a stretch of Northampton Avenue that’s
fast upgrading. Across the street, as if this were a “theme” block.
is the Club Jungle nightspot.
“We were finding that a lot of patients from Easton and the
Poconos were driving into Bethlehem for their health care,” said
Mary Crocus, the nurse in charge of the Easton clinic. So St. Luke’s
opened the downtown Easton clinic to serve them. Many of these patients
are Hispanic, so the office manager is bilingual.
The clinic provides general gynecologic and prenatal care as well
as menopausal medicine, cancer screenings, routine breast exams, and
some pediatric services. Many of the women who utilize it have young
children in tow, which explains the appeal of the mural.
Crooker said the minimal costs were split between
the sponsors. St. Luke’s rented the ladders and drop cloths and paid the parking
fees for the painters in a nearby lot. Moravian College paid for the
paint and Crooker’s salary, while the students earned credit
for their work.
The painters have left space on a partition midway
across the mural for children to fill in flowers and leaves of their
own design. And
in the last corner to be done, the frog will sit beside their signatures,
as well as a greeting: “A gift from Moravian College to the children
of Easton and St. Luke’s Hospital.”
