Lowell House Art Project to Brighten Walls

Lowell House may be giving Adams a run for its reputation as Harvard's most artsy House with the newly conceived Lowell Art Project. The project, founded this fall by tutors and students in Lowell, has attracted over a hundred participants who have volunteered to contribute pieces of art, ranging from photographs to collages to crayon drawings, to decorate the tunnels of the building. Twenty pieces are already hanging, with many more to come.

"Our goals are to make it inspiring and fun," said Sandy B. Alexander, a resident scholar in Lowell House and one of the organizers of the project. He also gave a nod to Adams House's famous tunnel murals. "We borrowed the inspiration of the Adams murals, and are going beyond by letting people post a greater number of forms."

Alexander hopes that the project will soon gain approval to expand to the stairwells of entryways as well. "If it was your own home, you wouldn't have bare stairwells. This is part of that same idea."

Abiola D. Laniyonu '13 is just one of many planning on contributing. Laniyonu is working on a charcoal drawing of a Russian monk during the bell exchange that gave Lowell Belltower its bells. "I started working on it last spring, and decided to use the Art Project to motivate me to finish it."

Laniyonu lived in Alexander's entryway last year, and said that Alexander hung some of his daughters' artwork in the halls.

"It made Lowell feel so homey; it's nice to see more student work [in the House,]" said Laniyonu. "The walls are an ugly color and exposed, and everything we can do to make the place look better I appreciate."