EVERGREEN PARK, IL – A few of Evergreen Park Community High School’s most talented art students have been hard at work this summer creating a new mural that will soon be displayed in the science wing at EPCHS in a student-led project and the latest example of STEAM work that involves multiple areas of study in a single project. 

“This seems like a cool way to show off the different disciplines of STEAM,” said Ava Chandler, an incoming senior who is among the EPCHS students who not only came up with the idea for the project but who are leading the implementation of it as well. “Science can be easier to digest when it’s presented in an art form like this.” 

The mural includes a depiction of Sir Isaac Newton, scientific equations, evolution and several other concepts related to chemistry, astronomy, biology and physics. 

Art students including Chandler, Izabella Rodriquez-Acevedo, Jax Olson, Juliana Bosch, Natalia Mosely, Danny Sommerio and Wilbur Smith have been working on it weekly since early April, with an anticipated completion date coming early this fall. Once complete, the mural will be permanently displayed in the science wing of the school along other aesthetic elements like the large periodic table of the elements that serves as the centerfold for that area of the school. 

Two of these students – Bosch and Sommerio – graduated this past May but continue to return to campus to help move the mural closer to completion. 

“Ava came to us last year asking if we wanted to do the project and we thought it was pretty cool,” Bosch said. “We’ve been working really hard over the summer and it’s turning out great.” 

Art teacher Tom Guerra, an EPCHS alum himself from the Class of 2011, is the faculty advisor for the project. He remembers working on a similar initiative as a Mustang student. 

“When I was a senior here, I worked on the first mural that was put up in the LRC (school library). I remember how that was such an important thing for me and how it helped propel me into the art field,” Guerra said. “When I learned of the opportunity to mentor a mural project like this, that was really exciting.” 

The project was funded in part by an educational grant from the EPCHS Foundation. The frame for the mural was built by Rob Rymek, an industrial technology teacher at EPCHS. 

This multi-discipline, collaborative project celebrates the many branches of science, from biology and chemistry to physics, earth science and beyond. Students are using their creativity and artistic talents to bring scientific concepts to life through art that will inspire curiosity and learning for years to come.