At Harrison College House, blank walls offer a world of opportunity.
At least for students like College senior Shelby Prindaville who are being asked to liven up the building's interior with original art.
That interior, called "modernized but cold" with a "corporate feel" by House Office Coordinator Jennifer Hook. For a building that houses Penn's Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts residential program, officials felt it had something missing.
Now, those officials hope to decorate that blank interior with specially commissioned student artwork as part of a new, somewhat unofficial program for the building's art-focused community.
Although barely off the ground, the program achieved its first success last week with the debut of Prindaville's To Sod With Daffodils in the building's main lobby.
A four-foot by six-foot oil painting, Prindaville's creation is based on a photograph showing Harrison rising above a garden of daffodils.
House officials say the work is exactly what they envisioned when they contacted Prindaville about creating such a piece about a year and a half ago. Although the house has bought student work before, Prindaville's was the first to be specially commissioned for a prominent place in the building.
Jennifer Hook, who met Prindaville three years ago, called the work "inspiring."
"It was impressive that she was able to translate her experience with landscapes to an image related to Harrison," Hook said.
Prindaville, a native of Kansas, has enjoyed small-scale watercolor painting and sculpting for years and has created art elsewhere around campus, including a sculpture at Wynn Commons and cartoons for Punch Bowl and First Call magazines. Still, she had never tried working on such a large canvas.
Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
Wharton freshman Lulu Chen , who lives in Harrison, said the work "brightens up the lobby" and will provide a "nice reminder of summer" during the bleaker winter months.
Harrison House Dean Frank Pellicone said the success of this first commissioned piece will provide incentive to enlarge the program.
He noted the importance of setting guidelines for student work to ensure it meets reasonable standards without infringing upon the students' creativity.
"Penn has such a great wealth of students with art talent," he said, adding that talks are already underway with a few other students to create similar pieces.
Most of those students are part of the House's art-related residential programs, which are supported by the Spiegel Fund.
"We want to work with students in a way that is enriching," Hook said. "This is it."
Prindaville agreed: "Student artwork will just resonate more with students."
