What is sixteen feet long, eight feet tall and has cracking eggs, a giant milk can, flying books and a shaft of light?
I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not a nocturnal Wal-Mart delivery truck rollover. It’s the Snow College Centennial Mural and it’s on display in the “arcade” area of the Huntsman Library.
Old-timers will recall the mural used to be on the second floor of the Lucy Phillips Library. With the construction of the Huntsman Library and the remodel of the Lucy Phillips building, the mural hid out in storage for a few years, but it has found a new home in the Huntsman Library.
Two legendary Snow College art professors, Osral Allred and Carl Purcell, painted the mural (each did half) in 1988 as part of the college’s centennial celebration.
They were asked by the committee in charge of the celebration to paint a mural that depicted prominent themes from the history of the college.
Stop by to take a look and you’ll see the Co-op Building, the Ephraim Market, and the Old North Ward Chapel where early classes at the “academy” were taught. You’ll also see the “Sunday eggs,” and the milk and nickels that were donated by local residents toward the construction of the Academy Building—later named the Noyes Building. The hatching eggs symbolize the birth of the college.
Lorenzo and Erastus Snow are prominently portrayed as are the pillars of the Noyes Building. “Reading” the mural to the end, shows the result of the commitment and sacrifice of those who have contributed to the college over the years—college graduates standing in the “light” of learning.
A quote by Osral Allred sums up the meaning of the mural nicely. He saw it as a “poetic interpretation of how Snow came into existence.”
