SOUTH BRUNSWICK – The newest community mural hanging in the South Brunswick Library is representative of the library’s 50th anniversary.
Simanti Chatterjee, Vidhya Vijayakumar, Swati Kumar, Lisa Adams, Patricia Dahl, Kathleen Burns, Ed Belding, Barbara Battles, Daniel Fenski and Nancy Duino designed a mural inspired by pop artist Roy Lichenstein’s “Preparedness.”
Barbara Battles, with Extension Services at the library, decided she wanted to honor the library’s golden anniversary with the image that was originally painted in 1968, the year the library was founded.
Unlike other years where the mural is an enlargement of a more famous work of art, the original is much larger than the copy. The original is in the Guggenheim’s collection in New York and measures 10 feet high by 18 feet long; South Brunswick’s is only 32 inches high and six feet long, according to Battles.
Artists worked on each panel, including the Color Me Calm Coloring Club. One panel is dedicated to Jacque Rubel, a contributor to past murals who passed away in October of 2015.
It will join the three other community murals that currently hang in the library’s Food for Thought Cafe.
In other efforts to celebrate the library’s anniversary, members painted and hid rocks and held musical performances related to the “Libraries Rock” theme.