Graffiti News
Students Paint a Science Mural at Evergreen Park High School
Seven students at Evergreen Park Community High School in Evergreen Park, Illinois, spent much of their 2026 summer break at school painting a mural for the science wing. The Chicago Tribune reported the project on 20 August 2026, noting that the group added the finishing touches in time for the first day of classes.
The mural started with a student noticing a gap
Ava Chandler, a rising senior at Evergreen Park Community High School, proposed the mural after realising the building had no artwork about science. "I noticed there weren't any science murals in the school," Chandler told the Chicago Tribune. She took the idea to art teacher Tom Guerra, who liked it, as did a group of her classmates.
Chandler, whose interests run to both art and science, told the Tribune she wanted the piece to show the origins of everything and how different disciplines of science connect with each other.
What the painting actually shows
The mural includes symbols from the periodic table of elements, a depiction of Sir Isaac Newton, scientific equations, and a sequence of evolution running from fish to four-legged mammals to a man carrying a briefcase. A DNA helix, part of a dinosaur and an asteroid also appear. The finished work will be displayed on a wall of the school's science wing.
Accuracy was a standard the students set for themselves. Juliana Bosch, who graduated this year and will attend DePaul University to study character design for animated films and shows, told the Tribune the group "wanted to make sure we included every detail and made sure our mural was accurate." Bosch said chemistry is her favourite subject because of how different substances interact and how elements react to create physicality in the world.
Izabella Rodriguez-Acevedo, also a rising senior, said the project reminded her how much she enjoyed painting as a child. She told the Tribune she liked that it put two of her favourite things together, art and science. Jax Olson, Natalia Mosely, recent graduate Danny Sommerio and Wilbur Smith also worked on the mural.
The teacher painted a mural in the same building as a student
Tom Guerra, the art teacher who supervised the project, graduated from Evergreen Park Community High School in 2011. According to the Chicago Tribune, Guerra helped paint a mural about reading and imagination when he was a student there, and that earlier painting is still in the building. "It's a nice way to find my way back full circle, being part of the thing that propelled me," he said.
Guerra also named something most art departments recognise: art students do not get the recognition athletes do in high school, and a mural is one of the few ways their work becomes impossible to miss. "I thought it was a really cool way to leave your mark on the school," Guerra told the Tribune. "It was a way for us to get recognition."
An EPCHS Foundation grant helped fund the project, and Rob Rymek, an industrial technology teacher at the school, built the frame for the mural.
School murals are the front door to mural culture
Guerra's phrase, leave your mark, is the same impulse that produces a tag on a rail bridge. What changes is the arrangement around it. A school mural comes with a wall someone has offered, a budget, a deadline, a teacher, and an audience that walks past it every weekday for years. An unauthorised piece comes with none of those and usually with a removal crew instead.
That difference is worth stating plainly, because the two are constantly compared and rarely on equal terms. Cities that spend heavily removing unauthorised painting often fund commissioned murals in the same budget year, and the people doing both are sometimes the same age.
The generational detail is the part that tends to get missed. A student who painted a mural in this building in 2011 came back as the teacher who supervised the 2026 one. Mural culture usually transmits exactly like that: quietly, through one person who did it once.
How to keep a record of the murals near you
Neighbourhood murals disappear. They get painted over, the building comes down, or a new tenant wants a clean wall, and after that only photographs remain. Wallscape's map shows murals and graffiti that people have already located and logged, and the feed shows what has been added recently. A school wall, a shop shutter or a legal wall all count. Posting one with its location means the record survives the wall.
Source: Chicago Tribune, reported by Janice Neumann, 20 August 2026.