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Volume CXXXIII, Number 8 |
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Mural spruces up new hospital facility
TED REINERT
STAFF WRITER
Professor Mark Wethli, the director of the Visual Arts program, gave
a talk on Tuesday entitled "Four Quartets: The Making of a Mural
for the New Mid Coast Hospital" as part of the Jung Seminar, a Bowdoin-based
community group that studies the works of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.
Over the summer, Wethli designed and painted four panels with two students,
Kyle Durrie '01 and Cassie Jones '01, who had been granted Surdna and
Langbein Undergraduate Research Fellowships, respectively. The four paintings
will form a 10' by 52' mural at the new Mid Coast Maine hospital facility,
which has its grand opening on December 2.
Wethli, who has taught at Bowdoin for 16 years, had no mural experience
before he was asked to teach mural painting in 1999. His classes have
since created several murals on campus. Wethli, a member of the Healing
Environment Committee for the new hospital, was commissioned to make a
mural for the major corridor; and he and his volunteer team of painters
received approval from the hospital on May 20.
In his lecture, Wethli discussed the history of the mural. The design
of the site dictated four panels, and for possible mural themes he thought
about different groups of four (like the seasons and the elements) but
then remembered T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" from college.
"We needed some fuel, some raw material for our project, and his
poetry gave us plenty," said Wethli.
The first panel presents a bird in the center, with roses on a vine.
The next features a tree against a night sky, the third has a water theme,
and the final one depicts fiery roses. They could be interpreted as summer,
fall, spring and winter, as all seasons are discussed in each of the poems
of Four Quartets. In his talk, Wethli explained the textual roots of the
imagery used in the paintings, often reading from Eliot, and playing a
tape of Eliot reading his own work.
The paintings all share common features, such as vines or vine-like rivers.
The designs were edited, some more than others, keeping in mind that the
mural is for a hospital and that the art should be inspirational and not
too "intense." The bird in the first panel has its root in an
ancient Greek mural, while the roses in the first and last panel are modeled
after an online photograph. "The Dry Salvages," the poem upon
which the water panel is based, refers to rocks off the coast of Massachusetts.
Wethli also showed photos of the painting process. Wethli, Durrie, and
Jones were sometimes joined by Leah Gauthier and Steven Albert '89--both
of whom work at the Educational Technology Center at Bowdoin--in the painting
process.
At the end of the talk, members of the Jung Seminar, led by Professor
Emeritus of Religion Bill Geohegan, facilitated a discussion about the
lecture.