By Alexandra Jaffe

special to the meadville tribune

This week, a couple of outdoor lavatories at Meadville’s Shadybrook Park “disappeared.” They can now be found behind a camouflage of four hand-painted murals conceptualized and installed by Allegheny College art professor Amara Geffen, her students and members of the Meadville community.

“They were kind of one of the eyesores in the park,” said Emma Cook, a sophomore at Allegheny who helped to paint the murals as part of her summer internship with the Center for Economic and Environmental Development. “To remedy that problem, we thought it would be nice to paint murals to transform the entrance of the park.”

Located just off upper North Street not far from Meadville’s middle-high school complex, city-owned Shadybrook Park was until recently a favorite summertime playground for children. Still used for organized youth activities one day a week when school’s out, its picturesque setting also has popular picnic areas for public use.

The murals were designed by Allegheny College seniors and CEED interns Christine Wusylko and Elizabeth Duhan by integrating concept drawings from students at Meadville Area Middle School and Meadville Area Senior High School. They were painted this past summer with the help of former art teacher Pete Maruska and his son, University of Rochester senior Andrew Maruska.

The murals depict a day-and-night theme, with each of the two outhouses showcasing local birds and wildlife and the view of the stream that would otherwise be obstructed.

“We wanted to camouflage the outhouses,” Geffen said, “to show, ‘here’s what’s in this site.’ ”

In addition to the murals, Geffen and her students are working on larger projects to transform Shadybrook Park into a community center and meeting place, as it had been previously for the city of Meadville.

“Shadybrook Park is the place where people went,” Geffen said. “It was a real asset, and a place that brought community members together.”

Through a project started in the fall of 2007 with the capstone class for Allegheny’s new Arts and Environment minor, plans to renovate the park have taken shape, and the murals are the first in what Geffen expects to be many projects over the next two years. Students and community members working together will install a stormwater filtration system, a footbridge over Mill Run, and a recreation path throughout the park.

Wusylko saw more to the Shadybrook Park project than just a chance to showcase her art.

“It’s an example of students working with the community to make the community a better place,” she said.

And the renovations are part of the Not Your Run of the Mill City project, a wider effort to make Meadville a better place for industry and business to grow. Geffen describes the Not Your Run of the Mill project as “a four-point strategy for strengthening and building a sustainable Meadville.

“It focuses on economic development, community development, neighborhood revitalization and environmental development,” she explained.