Rolling Meadows Art Club transforms dark underpass

An array of colors now brightens an underpass along Kirchoff Road in Rolling Meadows. Students in the Rolling Meadows High School Art Club and their sponsors, Cathy Pach and Martha Nava, spent the summer designing and painting a 92-foot long mural as part of a collaboration with the Rolling Meadows Park District.

The mural features a variety of programs the park district has to offer and also highlights its tagline - "Play Learn Grow."

"Our art club students created designs that represent different activities across the seasons," said Rolling Meadows High School art teacher Martha Nava. "As you walk through the underpass you start in summer, you'll move to fall, you'll then go into winter, then spring."

The mural was almost a year in the making. The park district first approached the Art Club last fall looking for help to beautify the dark and discolored cement wall.

The park district continued to support the project by bringing all the supplies and storing everything at the end of each day, making it easier for students to participate. The paint and supplies were donated by the JC Licht Benjamin Moore store in Rolling Meadows.

"It's been a very interactive process. We just had to bring the creative energy to the job," said Nava. "As our students worked on this, they really have a sense of pride that it's in their community, it's in their backyard, and they made this beautiful."

A ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 14 marked the "opening" of the mural to the public. A special plaque with the student artists' names is now permanently displayed next to the mural to recognize their contribution.

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